


Tehachapi

by Gunney



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 13:32:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 47,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8892622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunney/pseuds/Gunney
Summary: Starsky and Hutch have worked for several months to set up a cover at a maximum security prison. There cover is broken in less than a day. After they barely escape, Starsky, then Hutch, doggedly try to find the answers.





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"Tey-hah-chap-pee State Prison."

"Tey-hah-choppee. The accent is on the second syllable, and you call the prison "Tehachapi" anywhere in town, the locals will rip you to pieces."

"Real touchy about that, are they?"

"What was your name again?"

"Skeeter, David Skeeter, new transfer."

"From back east, right?"

The brown-haired man lifted his brows in surprise then shrugged, "Originally, spent quite a few years out here though."

Both men wore the same uniform, but one was older than the other by about twenty years.

"What'd you do before this job?" The old man asked.

"Worked as private security for a transport company, managed to get out before they went under. Figured I'd hook up with the state, end up with a more secure retirement fund." Skeeter said.

The old man shrugged, put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it, pulling the smoke in and holding it til the breeze blew from behind him. "I stopped thinking about retirement five years ago. The wife left me, took everything she felt she was entitled to. Now all I got left is this job. Measly paycheck. And that view."

Skeeter looked out beyond the barbed wire at the mountain, still capped with early spring snow. "I try to avoid that kinda long term attachment."

"Smart kid." The old man said, before turning back to the catwalk he traversed every morning. "Tehachapi is a nice place, the locals ignore the prison when they can, the prison ignores the town. But for the occasional forest fire or avalanche, not much happens around here."

"Avalanche? Really? With that little snow?" Skeeter asked, pointing vaguely at the mountain.

"All it takes is the feet of one crow to leave a mark." The old man said, resisting the urge to cackle at his own mysticism until he saw the serious look on the new guard's face.

"It's a joke, son."

"Yeah…"

The two walked on in silence, watching both sides of the wall they traversed. Most of the prisoners were at breakfast, or starting their morning work schedule. None would be out on the grounds until after nine, yet the old man walked his post.

"You can't really say nothing's been happening around here...I mean...that's why they hired me isn't it?" Skeeter said.

"We had a few escapes, that happens. But where can they go? You've got nothing but mountain and forest on all sides. Most of these yuck-ups come from the city. They wouldn't know a poison oak from a cactus."

"You're still looking for three men, aren't ya?" Skeeter asked.

"Whose side are you on, kid?"

Skeeter gave a disarming smile and put a hand up, "I'm sorry. I'm just getting the lay of the land here. I like to know the kind of guys I'm working with."

"Poke a bear enough times, he'll react to ya." The old man said.

"You've never lived in a city, have you?" Skeeter asked.

"How'd you know?" The old man asked sarcastically, then turned and opened the door to one of the guard towers. The room they stepped into was greenhouse warm compared to the whip of the wind on the catwalk. There were two revolving chairs in the small room, and another door connecting to the catwalk that ran west to southwest.

A console spanned half the room at waist height containing a radio, siren controls, the switches for the search light on the top of the tower and a gun locker. From the waist up, every wall was a window that ran to the ceiling.

Pulling a chair up to the console the old man flipped a switch and said, "Control this is Tower 2, Jack Ackabee, all clear. Time is 0830."

"Ackabee, in Tower 2, this is control. Roger. Patrol interior and report at 0900 hours."

"Roger, and out."

The old man spun in his chair and eyed the young, curly haired kid that had been handed to him. He seemed comfortable enough on the job, if a little touchy inside the walls. "Ready to go back in, hot shot?" Ackabee asked.

"That's what the big bucks are for, isn't it?" Skeeter asked, setting the shotgun in its rack.

When he straightened the old man tossed a handgun, stuffed in a holster, into his hands.

"I thought we weren't supposed to be armed on the floor." Skeeter asked, opening the breech of the weapon, then checking the rounds in the clip.

"Rubber bullets." The old man said, not hiding his disgust for them. "Something the English invented to put down the Irish a few years back. The warden wanted some kind of deterrent inside the prison, but nothing that could kill his own men."

"Anybody been shot by one of these yet?"

"Sure.." Ackabee said, opening a hatch in the middle of the tower floor. A metal grate staircase sat beneath the hatch and the old man descended carefully.

"And..?"

"They went down. Same as they would with a regular bullet."

"But it didn't kill 'em."

Ackabee waited at the base of the first flight for the rookie to join him. "It killed him alright. Doesn't matter what the bullet's made of. You get shot in the head, you're dead."

The two men continued their descent, reaching the ground floor where two locked doors greeted them. One of them would lead directly to the outside, the other down a corridor to the commissary. As they walked the noise of the prison, awake and alive, grew louder around them. The main dining hall was a giant room with school-cafeteria-style tables covering the floor. Once the meal was over most of those tables would be raised and moved so that the prisoners assigned to kitchen duty could sweep the floor quickly, then set up for the next meal.

Every prisoner in the room had on a blue jumper. This marked them as minimum security prisoners, and they would move in groups of five or ten from job, to recreation, to classes, to meals, never mingling with any prisoners of higher security.

"Now these guys are gonna finish up in about ten minutes. While they're sitting at their tables they're ok. Getting a meal in their bellies, working out rotations with their pals, setting up whatever under the table nonsense they're planning on getting up to."

Skeeter nodded. "The trouble time is transition."

"You got it. That's why we count silver ware, run the guys through the metal detector there. Give 'em a bit of back talk to keep them thinking about us as the threat in this prison..not each other." Ackabee said.

Skeeter pointed at a blonde prisoner with a mustache, sitting essentially by himself. "What about that guy?"

Ackabee craned his neck. "Must be new. He's pretty, but big enough he can maybe keep himself out of trouble. He'll want to gang up as quickly as possible. Fresh face like that won't last long in a place like this."

"What do you mean, pretty?"

"Look at him. He's looking around too much. He's casing the place. The guys that've been here for years don't have to do that. They've got cronies to do it for 'em. Anybody watchin' their back like that guy, it broadcasts "victim" louder than an air raid siren."

Skeeter's blue eyes narrowed on the white man barely touching his food. "Well..s-shouldn't we be helping him? Protect him? I mean...isn't that our job?"

Ackabee looked between Skeeter and the new prisoner, then shook his head with a snort. "Sure kid, that's our job. But we aren't going to be in the right place at the right time every hour of the day."

Skeeter nodded agreement, but seemed too distracted by the conversation. Ackabee slapped the back of his hand against the new guy's chest and said, "Relax. They're alright now. It's dinner time you gotta really watch 'em. The special ones get restless right before bed."

Ackabee let out an ugly laugh and Skeeter tried not to grimace visibly. Instead he watched the blonde haired prisoner finish his tray of food and walk with it to the depository. Far too many eyes watched the man walk, for Skeeter's liking.

A long, bellowing air horn sounded and Ackabee stepped away from the wall, jerking his hand for Skeeter to follow. Almost as one the entire prisoner population of the room got to their feet and walked by the conveyor belt that would take the silverware, trays and plates back to the dish room.

Skeeter ended up on one end of the belt, and Ackabee the other, counting utensils, cups, saucers, etc. By the time the last prisoner left the room the only thing missing was a tray.

The prisoner in the kitchen shouted, "That's been missin' a few days, Boss Ackabee. Warden took it, I think."

"You best have it back by dinner." Ackabee shouted back, winking at Skeeter.

The two guards followed the last of the prisoners through the metal detector and down a narrow hall that led straight for the recreation yard.

As the day outside was chilly each man was handed a cloth cap and gloves by a security guard, and the prisoners were released into the morning's dim light. A basketball game started up in the westernmost corner of the yard almost immediately, men choosing sides as they played. Another group wandered over to the weight lifting equipment, not making much effort to build muscle on a full stomach. Skeeter watched the blonde man, but kept his distance.

The prisoner wandered over to the weight bench, but was ignored, and none of the prisoners made an effort to vacate the bench. He headed for a group kicking a soccer ball around the yard, but was ignored by them until the ball flew beyond into his path.

"Hey, Blondie. Toss us the ball." One of the players cried, and the blonde man popped the ball onto the toes of his shoes, flipped it up to his knee, kicked it into the air and head butted it back into the game. The men playing gave the effort semi-genuine sounds of approval.

"Joo want to play, Blondie?"

"Not if you keep calling me "Blondie"." The blonde prisoner said. His voice was kept low but it carried all the same.

The men playing soccer had stopped moving altogether, the new game of testing the fresh fish was far more interesting.

"What should we call you then? How about Daisy?" Said the mustachioed, Texican clearly leading the group.

"No, Sunflower, for his beautiful countenance." Said another, splitting his lips to reveal rotting and missing teeth.

"How about Ken. Like the guy that goes with Barbie?" The blonde prisoner said, a smirk appearing in the corner of his mouth.

Skeeter and Ackabee noticed the change in the blonde man's stance at the same time, a second or two before the leader of the group did. "Okay, you don't like our names, we don't like yours. How about a compromise...what does the state of California call you, uh?"

"Huckleberry."

"Huckleberry." The Texican chuckled, his group falling into titters. "Like with that crazy white boy painting the fence?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever…" Huckleberry said through a smile that meant nothing.

"Joo going to play soccer with us, jefe?"

The prisoner took a moment to scan the yard again, the same all consuming stare that he'd had in the commissary. For a split second he met Skeeter's eyes, then continued on as if the new guard meant nothing to him.

"Give me the ball." Huckleberry said finally, holding his left hand out, fingers splayed. The ball flew at him, hard, and he caught it with his forehead and knocked it into play, starting the game.

As the ball became the focus, the tension in the yard eased.

Ackabee sidled toward Skeeter, watching "Huck" slip into the gang of Chicanos. They watched in silence as the language went from English to Spanish, and the new prisoner made the transition without a snag.

"Might have judged him wrong." Ackabee said. He glanced up to the face of the new guard and asked, "What are you grinnin' at?"

"Nothin'. Just glad I didn't have to use this." Skeeter said, recovering, his hand still resting on the gun clipped to his belt.

"You know I'm more worried about you now, than I am him." The old man said.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The day went smoothly for Skeeter, following Ackabee and the prisoners from function to function. From recreation they went to their morning jobs. The prisoner Huck was assigned to the laundry room with a half-dozen others, including the leader of the Chicano band.

"That one is Orlando. He's not bad. Takes care of his guys. Does some smuggling from time to time through his conjugal visits, but nothing hard. He keeps all the Mexicans in the joint happy, so we let him. A couple years back one of his guys got into it with one of the blacks. A minor thing, but it turned into a major war. That's why none of them have recreation together." Ackabee explained. "No, we keep the Chicanos with the skinheads, and the crazies. The blacks with the whites, it all works out."

"You make 'em sound like Siamese fighting fish."

"What are those?"

"They're small fish that you can't put in the same tank together because they'll kill each other."

"Same thing." Ackabee said.

"Most of these guys are in for federal crimes, but not all of them are violent. Where are the white collar guys?"

"You answered your own question. Whites equals white collar guys. Unless they're the skinheads here."

Skeeter blinked a moment, looking painfully confused. "So this is all about...stick them in with their own kind and keep the peace. I mean..that's how you do it."

Ackabee gave Skeeter a squinty eyed look then shook his head. "I keep forgetting you're new to the prison system."

"I'm just trying to figure out how a black prisoner, a Chicano prisoner and a white prisoner could all escape together from the same prison...if they never see each other."

Ackabee turned a hard glare on Skeeter, then put his hand in the air waiting for the guards on the other side of the laundry to acknowledge. One of them picked up a radio and said, "Ackabee and Newbie, taking five."

"Get out there." Ackabee said, seething under a thin mask of control until Skeeter stepped out into the vacated hallway between the laundry and the infirmary ward.

Ackabee checked both ends of the hall, then slammed Skeeter back against the concrete with surprising strength. "Listen kid, if you're some kind of high-brow, adventuring, bleeding-heart reporter here on assignment, this is the time to say so and get the hell out."

"I'm not. I'm not..I'm-"

"Don't go there. Don't touch it. Even the warden doesn't know how word of those escapes got to the press. And the more the public knows the harder it is to find them. We've got more local yutzes parading through the woods with shotguns than at the height of hunting season and they want to shoot at anything on two legs that moves. Including our guys."

"I read about it in the newspaper, like anybody else." Skeeter said, then shoved the old man away from him with equal force. Ackabee stumbled back but caught himself, eyeing the kid with different respect. "Move to a new town, work in a prison you've never heard of before, who wouldn't read the local newspaper?" Skeeter asked, straightening his jacket.

"Yeah...I guess." The old man said, finally, calming himself. Skeeter had stayed close to the wall and Ackabee let out a sigh and waved his hand apologetically. "Look, kid, I'm sorry. The whole prison has been uptight since those escapes. It's been four months of hell and not knowing who you can trust around here. The new kid comes in and starts asking questions about the escapes right off the bat...I mean…"

Skeeter offered a grimace that might have been a smile. "I get it, Ackabee, trust me. I get it. No harm." Pulling away from the wall Skeeter rubbed his shoulder and rolled it in the socket. "My arm may fall off, but...no harm."

Ackabee chuckled and turned back toward the laundry. Skeeter caught the tremor in the old man's hand as he moved down the hall, but kept his mouth shut. "You're stronger than you look, I'll give you that." Skeeter muttered.

Ackabee flashed him a look then opened the door, and the two men waded back into the sauna-like room. Walking behind Ackabee, Skeeter made eye contact with Huck, rolled his eyes then followed the older guard back to their station.

After a few minutes the blonde prisoner walked up to the station and asked, "Get a smoke break?"

Ackabee narrowed his eyes at the prisoner and said, "You don't smoke, Huckleberry."

"I still get a smoke break, though." The blonde said, staring the old man down through half-lidded eyes.

"I'll walk him out for five minutes. Feeling a little warm as it is." Skeeter said.

Ackabee nodded and pointed Skeeter toward the staircase that would lead out to the balcony.

The promenade, a barbed wire fence covered walkway that surrounded the whole building, provided a convenient place for prisoners or guards to take a smoke break or just leave the stuffy air of the prison for five minutes. The interior pentagon of the five sided prison provided the recreation area, and every major gathering space of the prison had access to the promenade. The ground beyond the promenade was the deadman's zone, bordered by the catwalk and the guard towers.

The likelihood of a prisoner getting through the fence, down the two stories to the deadman's zone, and over the second barbed wire fence without being spotted or shot by a guard was very little.

Skeeter and Huckleberry stepped onto the windy promenade and leaned against the foggy windows of the laundry for a few seconds, breathing.

"What was that all about?" Hutch finally asked, staring at the wide snow scattered plain beyond the prison.

"Ackabee didn't like my questions. Thought I was a reporter. He's jumpy, but he's clean. Just doesn't want to lose his job before his retirement comes through."

"Think we can count on him?" Hutch asked.

Starsky shrugged. "Maybe. He's scared of somebody, but I haven't figured out who. Scared enough to nearly break my shoulder slamming me against a wall."

"Yeah?"

"Hey...you know he had you spotted as fresh meat up until an hour ago. Why did it take you and Orlando so long to become pals?"

Hutch shrugged, glancing at the shadow of a guard pacing in the nearest guard tower. "We become buddies too soon, his gang would doubt his judgement. I had to..prove myself."

"That's something else they didn't tell us." Starsky said, dropping his voice. "Your kind shouldn't even be with the Chicanos. Most of the whites are in the other rotation."

"That sounds like its going to be a problem."

"Not if you dye your hair black, and speak with an accent."

Hutch gave Starsky a perturbed look and rolled his eyes.

"You think I'm kidding?" Starsky said with a tiny smirk.

"You gonna be able to handle yourself with that mean old guard?"

"Shut up and get back inside, law breaking criminal."

"Keep that up, you're going to hurt my feelings, copper." Hutch said, then waited for Starsky to open the door and walked back into the laundry.

Ten minutes later the air horn sounded and Ackabee said, "We search, then on to their second jobs. You and me will be taking half the group to the motorpool."

The search went without incident and the groups split. Huck went with another group to the license plate shop, and Skeeter took six of the twelve to the motorpool.

"So this job here…" Skeeter shouted over the whine of an air compressor, and power tools against steel. "Do the prisoners choose their own jobs, or do they get assigned?"

"They're assigned first. Partly to keep them from choosing what they think might be easy work, and partly to see what they're good at. Let a prisoner do a job he's good at and he'll stick to it. Once the prisoners have apprenticeships they don't rotate with the regulars. They stay at their job during all working hours."

"Who awards apprenticeships?"

"The warden." Ackabee shouted, then put a hand up watching a prisoner. Skeeter caught sight of a man standing back up after retrieving a tool. "Keep an eye on that one. We'll do a stricter search before he leaves."

"So the warden comes down here to observe them?" Skeeter asked.

Ackabee shook his head, his attention fully focused on the man who had dropped a tool. "We guards, or the shop bosses, tell the warden who deserves an apprenticeship and he grants them."

Skeeter watched the prisoner, catching the shifting gaze, the itchy behavior. He would've guessed the prisoner was coming down from a high, off whatever cheap or manufactured drugs he could get on the inside. "Does the warden control anything around here?"

Ackabee snapped a warning glance toward the new guard and said, "Pay checks. Go around that way. Let's find out what Mr. Tuttle is up to today."

As they moved away from the guard station Skeeter noticed Ackabee slipping the radio into his belt. Skeeter tightened his hand on the grip of the pistol at his side, but kept the gun where it was. He and Ackabee arrived either side of the jumpy inmate at the same time.

"Mr. Tuttle!" Ackabee shouted. "This is one of our new guards. His name is Skeeter."

"Uh. N-n-n-nice to m-m-meet you, S-s-s-skeeter."

"You too, Mr. Tuttle. Having trouble with that carburetor?" Skeeter asked, pointing at the grease covered blob of machinery on the workbench.

"Um...i-i-i-i-its um…"

"I'll tell you what your problem is, Mr. Tuttle." Skeeter said, then slapped a hand against Tuttle's trouser pockets, and pulled a flat head screwdriver from one of them. "I've never seen a mechanic use a flat head on a carburetor."

Ackabee had a smug smile on his face as Tuttle squirmed. Skeeter leaned a little closer and asked, "Am I gonna find anything else in your pockets when you leave the shop today, Tuttle?"

The prisoner looked like he would shake apart. He shook his head at Skeeter, then at Ackabee, stuttering, no longer able to form actual words.

"Do you smoke, Tuttle?" Skeeter asked.

The man nodded, vigorously.

"Let's take a smoke break. Talk about that carburetor, car guy to car guy." Skeeter said.

Ackabee gave him a surprised look but swept his hand toward the metal staircase, and toggled the radio to announce the transfer of the prisoner.

Once they were outside Tuttle slipped half a cigarette from behind his ear and waited, cupping his hand around the smoke. When Skeeter didn't respond, Tuttle said, "W-w-we can't c-c-c-carry l-light-"

"Oh, sorry about that, guy." Skeeter said, then dug into his pockets and lit the man's cigarette. "How about we play some yes or no questions for a while, so you can smoke your cigarette, eh?" The guard asked, his tone friendly.

Tuttle gave him a wary look, but nodded, eyeing the gun.

"Are you scared, Mr. Tuttle?"

The prisoner shook his head no, sucking tobacco into his lungs and breathing a sigh of relief that seemed to go to his toes and back.

"I think you were scared. I think you were so scared that you did something stupid, like trying to sneak a screw driver out of the shop. No? The reason I think that, Mr. Tuttle, is because you put that screwdriver in the dumbest place possible. A place where you knew it would be found once you were searched. And uh...you would be punished for it. Maybe forced to stay in your cell for a while?"

Tuttle had stopped responding, staring at the brand new guard like he had encountered a mystic, or a mind reader.

"Now...is that because you don't like the people around here? Or is it because you know there's something coming down, and you want to be safely out of reach before it gets here?"

"B-b-b-but y-y-y-got...b-bu-"

"I'm sorry, I forgot. Yes or no questions. Is there something coming down in the prison tonight?" Skeeter asked.

Tuttle stared him in the eyes with watering, black pupils, then finally looked away.

"Is it gonna happen at dinner?" Skeeter asked.

Tuttle was staring at the metal grate at his feet, smoking his cigarette down to his fingertips, then past them, unaware of the pain.

"You want to be locked into your cell tonight, before dinner?"

Tuttle's eyes shot back up, welling with desperate tears, pushing the word, "Please." through a constricted throat.

"Alright…" Skeeter said, matching the inmate's volume. "You done with your cigarette? Yeah. Just put it down. Just drop it right there and-HEY!"

His shout caused the inmate to cringe and stumble back. "You just practically burned a hole in my shoe! What the hell's the matter with you!" Skeeter screamed, then grabbed the inmate by the shoulder of his tunic and forced him back into the shop.

"Skeeter, what happened?"

"This man just tossed a lit cigarette at my pants. Practically burned a hole in my new shoes. He needs some time to himself, I think. With a book about manners." Skeeter pushed the quaking prisoner down the stairs and let him stumble on the main floor, keeping a hand on his tunic.

"Tuttle, picking on the new man. That's no way to make friends." Ackabee said, loudly tut tutting while he got on the radio to announce the transfer of a prisoner. "Hey Skeeter, you handle that by yourself or you want help?"

"Which block is he in?"

"A-block, Cell 10."

"I got it." Skeeter said, then dragged the prisoner to the door, waited for it to buzz open, and shoved him through.

In the hall, some of the bluster left the new guard, and he walked the silent and quaking prisoner through the corridors, scanning the emergency exit plans near each doorway to make sure he was going in the right direction. Before they reached the final hallway Skeeter checked behind them then leaned in to the prisoner's ear.

"Tuttle, this is me, Skeeter, doing you a favor, yeah?"

The prisoner nodded his head vigorously.

"Which means, someday, if I ask you for a favor. You're going to give it, yeah?" Another violent nod. "Good. Glad to have this understanding with you, Tuttle."

The transfer to the cell block happened without a hitch and Tuttle collapsed into a quietly quaking ball at the back of his bunk the moment the door locked.

Skeeter stood watching the prisoner for a long moment, feeling his own source of terror starting in his gut. Whatever was coming down, whatever Tuttle was so afraid of, the rest of them needed to fear just as much. The problem was, other than one man, Skeeter didn't know who he could trust enough to warn.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Dinner was four hours away, and Skeeter had a half-hour lunch break coming up. Ackabee had taken a liking to him and offered to buy Skeeter dinner that evening, after both men got off duty. Skeeter couldn't very well refuse the offer, but he wasn't so sure either he or Ackabee would be alive to eat.

He needed to find a way to talk to the prisoner Huck, and Orlando, as soon as possible.

"Hey...Skeeter.."

"Huh?"

"You know you showed some real smarts. Real balls, back there with Tuttle. That's not the sort of skill I'd expect to see from a transport guard. I mean...your little prisoners never talked back."

"I've got a big brother." Skeeter said, watching the large congregation of prisoners collecting utensils, napkins, and trays before they were served a rainbow of colored slop.

"Was your brother in trouble a lot?" Ackabee asked.

"Sort of. He's a cop."

"Yeah?" Ackabee said, "Strapping kid like you, you didn't go the same route?"

"I didn't like the rules. Hey, no offense, but so far this question thing isn't fair. Mostly you ask, and I answer."

Ackabee considered the young guard for a moment then said, "Alright."

"Whose the big dum-dum, the big softy among the guards. The one that everybody slips by?"

"We got top notch staff here, Skeeter." Ackabee said, his voice schooled.

"Come on, Ackabee." Skeeter said, "Don't kid a kidder. Everybody has a loose end. Otherwise the prison system wouldn't work at all."

"Suddenly you're the expert? This is Day 1, fifth hour, and you know all about the prison system."

"My brother's a cop, remember." Skeeter said.

Ackabee grunted in general disagreement, watching the prisoners. "Why do you want to know, huh?"

Skeeter considered the older man for a moment, watched as a prisoner dropped a fork and knife, picked them up again and got clean silverware without pocketing anything, then said, "I want to know if I'm workin' with a guy who's gonna follow the rules."

Ackabee took in a deep breath and pushed it through his nose, taking his time before he answered. "I follow my rules in here, Skeeter. They've kept me alive for thirty years. You ask any of these guards and they'll not only tell you that I'm the best, but I'm the one that trained 'em. These are my men, Skeeter. You want to find the dum-dum, start in administration."

"These are your men?" Skeeter asked, his voice low.

Ackabee nodded, once, eyeballing the biggest prisoner in the building. He got an, "Afternoon, Mr. Ackabee." from the hulking man, before the prisoner found a seat.

"Then which one of your men organized an impossible escape for three prisoners?" Skeeter asked.

This time there were no easy hallways to disappear down. All Ackabee could do was glare and walk away. Skeeter stayed at the column he'd been leaning against and watched the prisoner Huck come into the lunchroom. Somewhere along the line he'd gained a black eye. In less than two hours, between the time that Skeeter had last seen him in the laundry room and now.

Fighting every urge in him Skeeter looked away from the blonde and stared at the silverware changing hands until every prisoner had been fed.

From across the room Ackabee shouted, "Skeeter, you're on your break."

Skeeter straightened and stepped from the room, up to the upper balcony and out onto the promenade, walking its length to the southwestern wall of the building. There was a single door that lead into the guard's lounge and locker room. Skeeter ducked back into the building, checked to make sure that the room was unoccupied then went to the payphone on the wall, dropped a quarter and two dimes and dialed long distance.

His report was brief, and mostly in code. More important than any other piece of information was his fear that something was going down that night. Unlike the few establishing weeks that Starsky, Dobey and Hutch had hoped they would have, they'd barely been in the prison a day before the obligatory crap hit the fan.

"Our blonde fruit has already been bruised, too." Skeeter said. "Only took a few hours out of my sight for rough handling." There was a beep on the other end, a warning that the recording tape was running out. Skeeter sighed and ended the call, then turned to find he wasn't alone anymore.

Two guards stood just inside the door, leaning casually, and watching him.

"Uh...hey, fellas, I'm David Skeeter. New guy."

"No, kidding." One of them said, the one with sideburns and a goatee.

"Making a lot of mistakes for a new guy, Skeetah." The other one said. His hair was a little longer than might have been regulation, parted on the side to reveal a scar disappearing into his hairline.

"I'm just asking questions, guys. Can you blame me?"

Goatee shook his head, his hands still in his pockets. "You weren't just asking questions. You're starting to make accusations."

Scar crossed his arms over his chest and took a few steps forward. "That's no way to make friends, Skeetah."

"Skeeter...with an 'er' at the end." Skeeter said. "And I hate to break it to you guys but, this cute little intimidation act isn't gonna work for you."

Scar turned to Goatee and asked, "Were we being intimidating?"

Goatee's face wrinkled into a look of concern and he said, "No, I thought we were here for a little conditioning."

"Conditioning...that's cute. You do the goatee with the hair, or is that separate?"

"What?" Goatee asked, genuinely confused.

"Sorry, old hairdresser's joke."

This time it was Scar's turn to give a confused look.

"Nevermind." Skeeter said waving them off with one hand, while the other, finally closing around the handle of the coffee caraffe, threw scalding hot coffee towards the two guards. The liquid hit Goatee but missed Scar, who swung a fist at Skeeter's face.

Skeeter ducked, swung upward with the caraffe and winced as the hot glass burned Scar's face on impact, but didn't shatter.

Goatee came at him next, ducking under a swing of the coffee pot and scoring a hard fist in Skeeter's stomach. Skeeter bent at the waist, swinging the caraffe back against the coffee maker until he heard glass break. What came forward was a plastic handle with a shard of broken glass still attached. Skeeter swung it at Goatee just as Scar recovered and brought both hands down on the back of Skeeter's neck.

Pain blasted into the back of Starky's skull and all pretense of the cover he was supposed to be maintaining went out of his head.

"He cut me! The bastard!" Goatee shouted, then stomped down on Starsky's wrist, trying to pry the handle of the coffee pot away from him. Starsky thrust his other hand up, tightening his grip on the handle and getting his feet under him until he could rock back onto his shoulders, his feet up and planted in Goatee's stomach, tossing the guard over his head and into the wall.

His head was still spinning but Starsky got to his feet and squared off against Scar, handle brandished.

"What the hell is your problem man?" Scar demanded.

"My problem? What's your problem? This supposed to be part of my training?" Starsky demanded, easing his stance a little and backing towards the door.

Scar, seeing the tension bleed out a little, straightened and shrugged. His eyes flickered between the new guard and the door before he said, "We were just messing with ya, man. Just...just a little roust."

Starsky spared a glance toward the door, then snapped his attention back to Scar, his brain slowly translating what had been behind him.

The biggest prisoner in the prison, a bull of a man called Hadrian, stood in the doorway, looming behind Ackabee.

"He cut me, Mr. Ackabee." Goatee whined, showing off the bleeding line on his arm.

"Get it cleaned up and get back on the floor, both of you." Ackabee said. Without a word Hadrian moved away from the door, but stayed just behind Ackabee like a loyal, giant dog.

Starsky stood panting, still clinging to the coffee pot handle. The pad under his thumb on that hand was bleeding from cuts caused by the breaking glass, but he couldn't feel it.

"What's that prisoner doing in the guard's lounge, Mr. Ackabee?"

"What are you doing, Skeeter, beating up other guards?"

"Okay…" Starsky said, tossing the handle into the corner. "So we're both breaking the rules."

"Not my rules." Ackabee said, his mouth hanging open for air.

Starsky nodded slowly, working on catching his breath. "If I asked you...what was going down tonight. Would you tell me?"

Ackabee pursed his lips and shook his head. "Only if you would tell me which, of the two prisoners you've been alone with so far today, told you about it."

Starsky stopped breathing for a moment, seeing through the game. "So where does that leave us?"

"You can go back on duty, Mr. Skeeter. Since you're so curious, you can cover the dinner transition tonight. And uh...get that hand looked at. The prisoners are like sharks sometimes. They go into a frenzy at the sight of blood."

Starsky looked to his hand then grabbed a handful of napkins from the coffee table and balled them against the wound. He left the room, stepping around the hulk known as Hadrian and walking stiff legged to the infirmary.

Ackabee couldn't reasonably expect Hutch, or Huck, a new prisoner, to have been an informant. That meant he could only suspect Tuttle. Tuttle who was so frightened he was willing to risk solitary confinement to save his own life. A life that was no longer safe if the captain of the guard was on to him.

The infirmary was mostly empty. Populated by the guard Goatee, another prisoner covered with blankets and the doctor on duty.

Starsky waited, stuffing napkins against his bleeding hand until the doctor finished with the other guard. Goatee wasn't quiet about the man who attacked him, maligning his character up one side and down the other, but for the doc's sake he called the man a prisoner. Starsky ignored him, trying to think of a way to get to Hutch, or Orlando, or Tuttle, or all three.

Supposing Ackabee had arranged the escapes himself. Why those prisoners? Why then? What had he gained? And had all his guards really been on the take at the time? Loyal to Ackabee for keeping their jobs easy?

Was it about getting the prisoners out of the prison? Or getting them into the outside?

The doc came over, peeled the soaked napkins away from the ragged holes in his hand, looked between Goatee and Starsky and rolled his eyes. Starsky had to smirk, but kept his eyes to himself, trying to call up everything he, Dobey and Hutch knew about the escapees of four months ago.

Then there was the comment Ackabee had made. "Even the warden doesn't know how word of those escapes got to the press." He'd been believable as the old man, frightened of losing his job to internal conflict. Either there was still a major piece missing or Ackabee had played the part more than once. Possibly for every new guard that entered the prison. So what happened to the guards that-

The one place they didn't look. The one set of records they didn't ask for before starting this case. The hiring records. They'd wanted the names of all the guards currently employed at the prison, but not the records of everyone hired, even those that had been let go.

The records probably didn't exist anymore. If Ackabee was as good a crook as he was a guard.

Starsky flinched, then jumped, brought back to reality by the pinch of tweezers extracting glass.

"Drifting there, son?" The doc asked, his voice a low grumble. "How much blood did you lose, anyway?"

"Enough." Starsky said, unable to fight the jerk in his hand every time the doc probed a little two deep.

"Don't normally treat guards." The doc said, his mouth hidden behind a walrus like mustache. "Then I treat two in one day. Must be a special occasion."

Starsky glanced up at the white coat's breast pocket, read the hand stitched "Doc Salt" embroidered on the hem, and said, "What?"

"You get attacked by the same prisoner as Walters over there?"

Starsky glanced toward Goatee, now Walters, who had apparently been given leave to take a nap.

"Yeah, sure. Hey...did you treat a new prisoner, blonde guy by the name of Huckleberry."

"Nope. No, Huckleberry. Just Tuttle over there under the sheet, and Walters."

Starsky was on his feet pushing past the doctor in seconds. The heel of his hand dripped blood onto the white sheets that completely covered the prisoner, blood that Tuttle might have been able to use. If he were still alive. Starsky ripped the sheets back and stared at Tuttle's wide open eyes, frozen in terror.

"It was a cover up." He muttered. "A stall. He sent me on my break, and sent those two...you!" Starsky turned on Walters, grit his teeth and dragged the man up and out of his sleep. With his good hand Starsky pressed the guard's head back against the wall behind the cot he was on and leaned hard into the man.

"Who killed him?"

"What? What the hell are you-"

"Tuttle!" Starsky shouted, jerking Walters' head forward by a tuft of hair at his crown and forcing him to look at the body. "Who killed him?"

When Walters didn't speak at first, Starsky jerked his head back, forcing his chin up.

"You killed him, Mr. Skeeter." Walters said.

Starsky stared at the man and couldn't tell if he was lying, or believing a lie someone else had told. He stood back from the cot and suddenly felt his head spin. Maybe it was blood loss, maybe he'd been stupid and not paid enough attention to the doc. Hell...maybe the coffee had been poisoned. There was no way of knowing, and Starsky didn't have the time to wonder before he passed out, crashing to the floor.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"They poisoned the coffee."

Starsky groaned, heard the sound echo strangely and felt a headache start to pound distantly from what might have been his head. A sound, like something sweet being sucked off a spoon, came to him from nearby and the voice continued to talk.

"The guards around here talk more than the prisoners." The voice said quietly. "They brag about everything, including the murders. And they do it intentionally because they figure, who are the prisoners going to tell? This is maximum security. Most of these guys aren't ever going to see a parole board. And if they do, all they gotta say is that the prisoner was a screw up, and the guy gets more time."

Starsky groaned, certain he knew the voice that was talking to him, but frankly wishing it would shut up. His head felt fragile as an egg shell and his wrist was stiff and his hand was throbbing like it was on fire.

"Now...those three prisoners. You'd've never heard about it on your end, but the prisoners have hundreds of theories. They never met them, before they were inmates. Not those three, but before them there were other guards. On staff one day, gone the next. The prisoners were never supposed to see the transition from guard, to infirmary, to escaped prisoner."

"Hutch…?"

"Huckleberry."

Starsky finally got his eyes open and stared at the underside of a bed. The part of the mattress that bowed toward him shifted and Hutch's face appeared, hovering in front of the dark space that had to be a jail cell.

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm trying to figure out how you ended up in here, buddy." Hutch said.

Starsky lifted his head enough to see the cell walls beyond the struts of the bunk bed.

"Because you see, if you're in here, that means that you're destined to become an escaped, and therefore dead prisoner, and uh...I might be next."

"I promise you...you will die in the next two minutes if you don't shut up." Starsky slurred, only one eye making contact with Hutch.

His partner seemed unflustered by the threat and continued to stare down at him like a lopsided raccoon.

"Who hit you?"

"Hadrian. Big guy, gargantuan fists."

"What'd you do to make him mad?"

"Uh...I asked him to pass me a 'D'."

Starsky snorted, then groaned at the spike of pain it caused.

"I think he's got dysclse..dyslexi...he reverses his letters, see. And that makes him sensitive."

"A big guy like that...sensitive?"

Hutch rested his chin on the mattress of his bunk and asked, "How's your hand?"

"Hurts." Starsky was silent for a long time then said, "And we're in big trouble."

Quietly he brought Hutch up to speed, confirming their jointly arrived at theory and explaining what had happened to Tuttle.

"If we're right about Ackabee and the guards, he made the decision to get rid of you real fast. What all did you tell him?"

"I...told him I was single, new to town."

Hutch hissed. "That makes you easier to dispose of."

"Yeah...but I also told him I had a big brother who was a cop."

"Bingo." Hutch said quietly. "That's why you're still alive."

"He needs to run down this big brother cop before he disappears me into the woods." Starsky thought for a moment, his mind clearing. "But why would he stick me in with you?"

"I'm new to the system. Maybe making you disappear is his way of keeping the new people in line. They see guards turning on guards, then the guards are no more, they gotta think about their position as prisoners."

"Maybe."

"Were you able to check in?"

"Left a message." Starsky said, still chewing on the theory.

"Is this...whole thing starting to feel like a really bad idea?"

The air horn sounded, far too early to be any of the prearranged activities that filled the days of the prisoners. Lights started to snap on outside the cell door, the voices of the men rising in protest. Starsky carefully rolled onto his side, then sat up, his head swimming worse than before. His hand had been closed and bandaged, but the wounds felt raw and pulled at the stitches. He felt hot too, like he might have been fighting an infection.

Hutch slipped off the top bunk and stepped into the shoelace-less sneakers the prisoners wore, watching the doorway. "If were gonna escape, buddy, I'm 100% with you, but we're going to have to make it the best possible escape ever."

Starsky glared at Hutch, not sure he could stand, let alone escape, and wiped his hands on his pants. He was stunned to look down and find he was still in the guard uniform. Further, he still had the gun. Hutch stared at it with equal astonishment, watching Starsky pull out what looked like a full clip.

"Well that was stupid of them." Hutch said.

"Rubber bullets. Probably Ackabee's idea of less than lethal deterrent, though he blamed the warden."

"I don't like it." Hutch said.

"Suppose a prisoner...masquerading as a guard...escapes from a prison cell and all Ackabee has to do, to prove to the outside world that he, Ackabee, acted in the boundary of the law when shooting said prisoner, was to show them a videotape." Starsky said, his eyes wide.

Seconds later the door to their cell clicked, then slid open.

Both men stared at it, then back at each other.

"Wouldn't it look kinda hinky if the prisoner in the same cell with the masquerading guard, took the guard at gunpoint?"

Hutch had laid his hand over the gun and was pulling it from Starsky's hand.

"All they gotta do is shoot you, Hutch." Starsky said.

"With rubber bullets?" Hutch said, giving a devil may care smirk that cut at Starsky's chest.

A minute later they left the cell together. Hutch had the gun pressed against Starsky's temple, keeping Starsky close to this chest. They shouted together, Starsky pleading for none of the other guards to shoot, and Hutch shouting to be let through, while keeping his back against the wall at all times.

They stalled at the door that lead from Cell Block A to Cell Block B and Hutch screamed louder, Starsky adding an unsettling keen to his voice that finally prompted the stunned guards controlling the doors to unlock them. All of them.

They passed through three sets of hallways, barely moving as prisoner and hostage until they hit the cafeteria. It was dark, void of bodies. Hutch, keeping one hand on Starsky's shoulder, headed them across the wide open room to the door that would lead them to the recreation hall, then to admitting, then to the main door of the prison.

"This seem too easy to you?" Hutch asked.

"Maybe we caught them by surprise." Starsky said.

Hutch shrugged and reached for the door to the hall but Starsky stopped him. "Wait...not that way."

Without another word the dark haired partner crept up the stairs that would lead to the promenade, searching the dark length of concrete and barbed wire beyond the windows before he tried the door. It opened, and Starsky stayed in a low crouch while he leaned his torso into the wind. He jumped a moment later when Hutch appeared at his right shoulder.

"What's the matter?"

"The search lights. Those guys on the cell block opened all the doors. There's a risk of a major jail break, and the search lights are pointed at the parking lot. Why not the deadman zone, why not the woods?"

Hutch glanced out beyond the promenade, then back to his partner. "I see your point."

"They want us to escape. Or they wanted me to. So they can shoot me down once I'm in the woods."

"Except that maybe we screwed up Ackabee's original plan to fool your brother…"

"That means this should start to look like a real prison break in 3…"

The two counted together, "2….1."

Nothing.

Then the sirens, the lights started to move, and the voice of the warden rang through out through the prison declaring an armed and dangerous prisoner was on the loose.

"Glad we waited for that." Hutch said.

"I feel bettah." Starsky said, then grabbed the gun, pointed the barrel at his own head and nodded toward the guard tower. "Come on, criminal."

"Why am I always doing all the work?" Hutch sighed, guiding his prisoner out the door.

They moved fast down the promenade, ducking under a searchlight and coming up on a guard tower with a bang. Hutch shoved Starsky's face against the glass and made sure the gun was clearly visible. The guard in the tower made a move toward the rifle leaning against the console then froze when Hutch drew the hammer back on the gun.

They were given access and Starsky was 'ordered' to tie up the other guard. While Hutch armed himself with real ammunition, Starsky studied the switches and started flipping them randomly. "I got an idea." He said, working the panel until half the lights were blinking and the other half looked ready to burn out.

"Don't bother explaining, I won't like it." Hutch said, watching his partner with concern.

"Okay then." Starsky said with a shrug, then eyed the gun that Hutch had pulled aside for him. "You ready?"

Hutch took a deep breath and nodded, and Starsky pointed to the hatch in the floor. Hutch bent to open it, then climbed down to the first landing. "Come on, Starsky."

"Take that you arrogant suckers." Starsky muttered, flipping all the switches that would swing around the search light of their tower so that it blinded the guard in the next tower. He took to the stairs a second later, took his gun from Hutch and led the way down three more flights.

"Our avenue of escape is going be between this tower, and the one to the left." He shouted, barely touching the stairs. "Cause there's nobody to shoot at us in this one, and the guy in the other one can't see."

"Not bad, partner." Hutch said.

Neither man stopped at the door, but charged out into the wide open field of gravel and brush that led, uninhibited to the parking lot. Starsky spotted the Torino, parked at the very back of the lot where he'd left it the previous morning. He slapped his breast pocket once to make sure the keys were still there, then slid to a halt when he heard a dull thud behind him.

Hutch had tripped and rolled, and tried to recover but couldn't.

"Hutch!"

On his hands and knees, Starsky's partner dragged his left leg up under his chest and tried to push to his feet. Starsky thrust his arm under his partner's right shoulder before he could fail and forced him forward.

"You were right.." Hutch grunted. "...about your theory."

Starsky propped Hutch against the side of the Torino, struggling to get the keys out of the narrow pocket in the uniform coat. Finally ripping the pocket off the coat entirely, Starsk managed to unlock the driver's side, slung the door open and guided Hutch down onto the seat.

There was blood. Blooming on Hutch's left side, pulsing through the gaps between the fingers he'd pressed there.

More bullets were coming, pinging off the hood of the car as Starsky turned the engine over and fishtailed backwards across the parking lot. He managed a sloppy handbrake turn, slammed the car into gear and took off.

Two more shots slapped into the rear, sounding like hail. Only then did Starsky hit the headlights. With one hand on the wheel he ripped off the security guard jacket and shoved it toward his partner.

Hutch's breathing was shaky, the blonde dealing with the pain, shock, and fear all in one go.

"Hang on, Hutch, hang on." Starsky begged, hitting the switch on the radio and picking up the receiver. They were 114 miles outside of Bay City, at higher elevation, which meant the mountains might interfere with the signal. They're best bet would be a pay phone somewhere but Starsky didn't dare stop.

"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Anybody out there that can hear me, call the Bay City PD, Captain Dobey, Precinct 9. Tell him the birds have flown the coop. I repeat. Captain Dobey, Bay City Metro Division, Precinct 9. Birds have flown the coop. Over."

Hutch struggled to swallow, his whole body shaking. "Should probably...f-find a hospital."

"That's the plan partner, but I don't trust this town."

Hutch's whole body stiffened, his teeth shone in the darkness and Starsky flung a hand out as they careened sharply around a mountain road.

"Gotta stop the bleeding." Hutch forced the words out, his body relaxing again, breaths once more exploding from his lungs. "S-starsky. Gotta stop the bleeding."

"I know that Hutch!" Starsky shouted, gritting his teeth as he wound the car down a two lane highway that normally had a limit of 45mph.

Hutch tried to clear his throat, then gave a half-hearted cough, air coming out of him in huffs like a balloon with a rhythmic leak.

"Th-think...think it went through." Hutch said.

Starsky slipped a hand behind his partner's back and wiped the blood that came away on his uniform pants. "Yeah." He said, choking on the word. "How do I stop the bleeding...Hutch. Tell me. I can't...I can't very well put a tourniquet around your chest."

"P-pressure….h-heat. C-cold."

"Cold?"

Hutch nodded, his head lolling a little. "Cold...slows blood."

"Yeah but...won't that hurt ya, I mean? Aren't you supposed to keep warm?"

"You want me...w-warm..or alive?"

Starsky slowed the car, rapidly, slipped the Torino onto a gravel turn-off and slapped it into park, leaving the engine running. He jerked his uniform shirt off, ripping buttons and folding it into a pad that he pressed against the exit wound. Hutch stiffened and tried to stifle the cry of pain. Starsky tried to ignore it, folding the uniform jacket into a similar pad before he gently rocked his partner onto his side and pressed it against the entry wound on his back.

"Stay there…" Starsky said, his face hard against the fear, the agony his partner was in, the killing anger. Not willing to let it show. Not willing to let overtake him just yet. He ran to the side of the road and took off the white undershirt, laid it on the ground and started filling it with snow.

Snow...the one cold commodity that California had in spades at higher elevations. Snow...the one thing about this mountain that he chose to mock while pretending to be Skeeter. Snow...the thing that he desperately hoped his brilliant partner would be right about.

Starsky packed as much snow into the shirt as possible, wound it into a ball and carried it back to the passenger seat. Hutch's eyes were closed, shut tight against the pain.

The bigger wound was the one in the front. That was where the bullet, after expanding, had burst through. That was going to have to be the main focus of the cold treatment until he could get Hutch into the hands of real doctors, that knew what they were doing.

"Hutch. Lean back against the seat buddy." Starsky said, making sure that the compress on his back stayed over the wound. "I got...I got some snow." Starsky said, a laugh he couldn't control escaping his lips. He pressed the ball shaped compress down and Hutch stiffened again, his hand flying up, fingernails digging into the unprotected skin on Starsky's arm.

"Come on, partner. This was your idea. Hey!" Starsky's hand lifted, slapping against Hutch's face lightly until the blue eyes opened. "Your idea. You gotta cooperate with me, huh? Now...give me your hand. That's it...I know, it's cold, buddy. I know. That's it. You hold that there...and don't get smart."

Starsky pressed both Hutch's hands against the cold dampness of the shirt and waited until Hutch kept his hands their voluntarily before he shut the passenger door, climbed into the driver's side and started down the road again.

Once he was up to speed, he let his right hand rest over his partner's hands. Feeling them slowly get colder. Listening desperately for each breath. Watching the road with the knowledge that if he couldn't even drive them safely to a hospital, his partner's life-saving snow treatment was going to be pointless.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"Zebra Three, Zebra Three! This is Captain Dobey, Come in."

Starsky reached for the transmitter but his hand was so cold his knuckles creaked. The cold had numbed the annoying pain of the stitches in his palm, though.

"Captain Dobey, this is Zebra Three."

"Starsky! Where are you guys?"

"Highway 14, south bound." Starsky responded, glancing over to watch Hutch's chest rise and fall, then looking back toward the back end of the Buick he'd been following for ten miles.

"Where, Starsky?"

"Uh…" Breathe, Hutch, breathe. That's right, in and out. "We just passed a sign. 4 miles to Lancaster."

"Jesus...alright, we've got a unit heading out your way. Put on your flashers and the bubble."

Breathe...breathe…. "Bubble's on, Cap."

Captain Dobey had to have assumed. Or maybe he had heard it in Starsky's voice. His next question came without hesitation. "How's Hutch?"

Starsky drew in a breath that threatened to unleash a wave of emotions he didn't have the time or energy to deal with. He watched his partner's chest rise and fall and said, "Still breathing."

"They're comin', Starsky. We got men and machines heading out to that prison, too."

"You remember that hostage situation they had out in D.C. last year, Cap?" Breathe. Breathe.

"Yeah...what about it."

"Tehachapi may be another one of those. Only, the prisoners are the hostages."

The radio was quiet for a bit, giving Starsky plenty of room to hear Hutch breathe.

Except that he didn't.

"Hutch." Starsky hit the brakes and swerved to the side of the road. He'd barely thrown the handbrake before he was dragging Hutch onto his back on the seat, tilting his head back and forcing air into his lungs. "Come on, Hutch, breathe!"

The tears came. There was no way to stop them, or risk stopping his own heartbeat in the process. Barely remembering the training video they'd watched three times with two sets of trainees, Starsky felt for a pulse, but his fingers were so stiff he couldn't feel anything.

He breathed air into Hutch's lungs again, counting the breaths until he knew he'd done too many, then scrambled backward out of the driver's seat and ran around to the passenger side.

"Don't make me do this, Hutch. Don't make me do this…" He begged, knowing he had to. He tried again to find a pulse then pushed his ear against Hutch's chest and held his own breath, listening. Heartbeat. Yes. A heartbeat, faint, and slow, but there. He just had to breathe.

"Come on, you stubborn ox, breathe."

Starsky forced more air in, watched the chest rise and fall more than it had the whole time he was driving, but the air didn't want to stay.

"What do I gotta do, Hutch?" Starsky demanded. "Brush my teeth, mouthwash? What? Is my air not good enough for you?"

More breaths, move the tongue, check the heart. Starsky's lungs were angry at him, demanding he be more selfish with his oxygen. Demanding he pay attention to their needs but he ignored them, and forced more air into Hutch.

"I keep this up, you're gonna float away like a balloon. COME ON, Hutch!"

More breaths. Check the heartbeat. Was it even Hutch's heart he was listening to?

"Hutch you can't do this. It's not fair. YOU said it's hardest on the ones left behind." Starsky shouted through clenched teeth, jabbing his finger into Hutch's chest.

And Hutch took a breath.

The low whine of a distant ambulance came to Starsky's ears and he watched and waited, and Hutch took another breath.

Starsky yanked the mostly melted cold compress from his partner's chest and pressed his left hand over the wound, his right hand slipping into Hutch's sweat soaked hair, watching him breathe.

The paramedics came, working on Hutch at first where he lay on the Torino's seat. They slipped an oxygen mask over his mouth that immediately fogged with beautiful breath, then felt how cold Hutch was and demanded to know how he had gotten that way.

Starsky clung to the Torino, watching them work, afraid he would pass out and somehow be separated from his partner before he could know that he was alright. All he could say was, "It was his idea."

The ambulance raced to the nearest hospital, the Torino on it's tail. Starsky followed the gurney doggedly through the emergency room, staying with his partner until the operating room doors closed. A nurse was guiding him toward the waiting room when his knees went out. She managed to catch his head and prevent him from cracking it open on the linoleum.

************

"What's wrong with him?"

"Exhaustion, fever, his body was already fighting a cold before he went on the assignment. There's some infection in the hand, and we're trying to figure out the toxin in his blood. It's aggressive, which means it will take time, and rest to fight."

Dobey closed his lips together and eyed the man unconscious in the bed.

"I can tell you two things about Starsky. First, he won't rest at all until he knows his partner's alright. And two...once that happens, he's going to want to do something about what they did to Hutch."

"I can sedate him if I have to…" The head nurse said, a spark of fire coming into her eyes.

Dobey credited her with a slight smirk and shook his head. "Don't do that to him. He needs to be awake, however the surgery goes."

*********************

"I's talkin'...toyou. I was...and then sky...and Captain...Dobey. Do you know...I...I got shot one time and Hutch...he was there. He saved the day. Youremember that time that...Hutch-"

"I remember, Starsky."

"I'm tired….Captain. Why...why am I so tired?"

"You're sick, Starsky. You'd sleep a lot better if you'd stop talking."

"That's not very nice thing...to say...to a sick man. Hutch..hey Hutch." Starsky was quiet for a moment, eyes rolling in a fevered, pale face. "HUTCH!"

"Starsky!" Dobey tossed his magazine and got to his feet in time to prevent Starsky from ripping out the IV in his arm. Fighting the man back down to the pillow wasn't anywhere near the challenge Dobey had thought it would be. The captain took the man by his arms and shook him, just a little, just enough to get his eyes pointing in the same direction. "Hutch isn't here. He's not here Starsky." Dobey said, swallowing hard. "He won't come here unless you sleep."

Starsky panted for a long moment, eyes fighting the pull of gravity, then he finally said, "K." And his eyes closed.

***************************

"Captain Dobey?"

"Hmm?"

"Captain?" The voice called, a little softer.

Dobey forced his eyes open, knowing that the voice had something important to say. Once he recognized the white uniform he sat up in the chair, checked on the dark haired man in the bed, and quietly got to his feet, holding a finger to his lips until they were out in the hall with the door closed.

"He's out of surgery. He lost a lot of blood, and he's not out of the woods yet, but the doctor's are hopeful."

"When can he be moved?"

"What!?" The nurse exclaimed, managing to still say it in a whisper.

Dobey sighed, wiping a hand over his eyes while he considered what he was preparing to say, and just how insane it would sound. Yet...he'd seen it himself.

"Nurse...I'm not a medical professional. I don't proclaim to know anything about anything when it comes to health. But I do know, putting these two men in the same room will speed their recovery by weeks."

The nurse studied him, the way she'd studied a hundred other concerned friends and family in a hundred other situations. This man was earnest. And even if he knew nothing about medicine, he clearly knew his men.

"Only when it's medically advisable," She warned, "I'll see what I can do."

Dobey gave her a smile and heaved a "Thank you."

*****************************************

The night nurse didn't notice the man walking down the hallway in a pair of uniform trousers and a hospital gown. She didn't notice the IV tower he was dragging with him, or the furtive glances he was giving the nurse's desk as he passed.

She didn't notice him checking the map in the hallway, then hitting the button on the elevator and traveling alone up to the ICU floor.

In fact, until the nurses on the ICU floor came in to check on their solitary patient, nobody noticed that he had a visitor.

"They got me stuck to this IV. It's a real pain to drag around...and you know I suddenly have to pee all the time." Starsky said. "It's your move."

Starsky stared at the tiny Chinese checkers board, his partner's unmoving hand, and the marbles that remained where he had placed them an hour before. "You can keep on being stubborn about this, partner, but eventually you will have to wake up, and accept that I am the reigning, all-time, Chinese Checker champion."

Starsky waited, a count of twenty or so, before he sighed and reached out to move the first piece. "I'll help. This time. But next time...you are on your own pal. Ok, my turn. And...you know, it's only been about twenty-seven hours since you got out of surgery..so I guess you've got some sleep coming to you. But...the longer you schlupp around in that bed, the less the ladies will dig that sad, miserable heap of a body of yours. Just keep that in mind."

Starsky watched Hutch's chest move. He leaned over far enough to see if the eyes were open, then reached his hand out and laid it on Hutch's wrist.

"You did this for me once. And uh…" Starsky smiled around a lump in his throat. "I never told you...but that day you came into my room...and you were so excited about the case. Reams of printer paper everywhere. If it wouldn'ta hurt so much I would've died laughing."

Starsky sat, closing his hand around the pulse in his partner's wrist. "That's the way to go. Not like this, Hutch." Starsky shook his head. "Not like this."

For a long moment he let the machines talk, hating the sound they made, and yet desperate to hear them. "One more thing, before we continue our breakneck game here." Starsky pulled himself to his feet using his IV pole for leverage, leaned over his partner's body and shook his finger inches from his face. "If you're fakin' it, this time. I'm gonna kill ya. Now...whose turn? My turn? It's my turn."

******************************

"Captain, I'm telling ya, these guys are getting away with murder! What does it take to get a couple'a guys up into those woods!?"

"Money, Starsky! And solid evidence."

"The department has money. What about that extravagant Christmas party they threw last year. How much money did the commissioner use for that?"

"The commissioner's use of departmental funds is of no concern to you. And may I remind you that what we are talking about is prisoners. Prisoners, who according to their records, were consigned to death anyway."

"They weren't prisoners-"

"You have no proof of that."

"They were guards. They were GUARDS, Captain! And the only way we can confirm that is by finding the bodies and matching the dental records."

"It's not going to happen, Starsky. The commissioner and the chief of police were backing me up until we arrived at the prison-"

"They're lying."

"They found nothing. No record of your hire, no record of Hutch as a prisoner. No record of a prison break."

Starsky stared at Dobey from his hospital bed, jaw hanging open. "Are they nuts?" He asked, quietly.

"They view your last undercover operation as a money consuming, time wasting mess. And they aren't going to see it as anything else unless we can get solid police work to turn up real evidence."

Starsky threw the covers to the side and pushed himself off the bed. He pulled the IV needle from his arm and went to the closet to find socks and shoes to go with his pants.

"Where are you going?"

"To Tehachapi."

"You gotta be out of your mind."

"Did they blow my cov-"

"Who?"

"The cops that showed up at the prison the night we escaped. Did they blow my cover?"

Dobey angrily considered his detective for a moment then said, "No. They asked about Skeeter and Huckleberry."

"My cover was never blown, Captain. As far as Ackabee and the rest of his nuts are concerned I'm a prison guard, trying to be an honest guy. As far as I'm concerned, I can have a change of heart."

"Starsky!"


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Dobey's man disappeared out the door of the hospital room, and the captain of detectives heard something hard hit the wall. He stood in the empty room, staring at the IV drip as it slowly spilled its contents onto the blanket. He thought long and hard about the man the IV had been attached to. He knew Starsky wasn't thinking straight. The push to solve the case wasn't because of any loyalty to the department. It was a desperate need to make the work they'd already put into the case, and the sacrifice Hutchinson had made, worth the cost. It was what made the difference for every one of the good, trustworthy cops in his department. Making the product match the price.

Dobey also knew the numbers game that the commissioner, public relations, and the DA's office played every time a case began to make the news. The public didn't always see the minutia of a case as worth their tax payer's dollar. They wanted speedy results. They wanted what they saw on TV. They wanted black and white rules.

They wanted supermen.

The captain left the room and glanced down the hall to find his man leaning against the partition that divided the two elevators, his finger against the call button. Dobey wandered toward him at a quiet pace, stopping a few feet from his detective when the elevator arrived and the doors opened.

Starsky ducked into the car, punched the button for ICU, then held the doors open, looking intently at his captain.

Dobey stepped into the elevator and they stood in silence until the doors closed.

"Didn't get very far." Dobey said.

Starsky gave him a sideways glance, and looked vaguely like he'd been eating crow for the past few minutes. When the car stopped they walked together onto the floor, Starsky drawn to the observation window like velcro. Dobey went to the nurse's station and talked to the woman there in hushed tones, then walked back toward Starsky with the ponderous, slow pace that all of them had been stuck in since Hutch had been hospitalized.

"Nurse says they're going to keep him in ICU another night, make sure he's stable before they move him."

Dobey considered the pale face focused intently on a body mostly hidden by tubes, wires and machines. "Ripping that IV outta your arm doesn't necessarily mean you're released either."

Starsky turned his head a few degrees, then sat down on the bench beside the window, keeping the pinky finger of his left hand on the sill.

"I've tried to leave this hospital four times. Each time I end up here instead." Starsky tipped his head toward the window. "When I'm here, I'm thinking about those bodies. Already four months cold and getting colder. And that's the ones we know about. But I try to leave and I think...what if he needs me, and I'm not there?"

"Can't be in two places at once."

"That'd be a lot easier to swallow if anybody believed me." Starsky said.

"It's a state run prison. If there's corruption it goes beyond that facility alone."

"I know that, Cap. And I know you worked in prisons, I know you know what it's like inside. Maybe its not so strange, a...a new prisoner getting a black eye the same day he arrives. But why would the captain of the guard bring the same man who beat up that prisoner to the staff locker room...and have no explanation. Meanwhile, a new guard is being rousted by other guards. The prison mentality didn't stop where stripes met uniforms. Everybody was fighting for their lives, and the boss man wasn't the warden. For that matter...I never even met the warden."

"Starsky…" Dobey sat on the bench behind his man, the heels of his hands against his knees. "The men we sent up to the prison said the facility was quiet when they got there. No signs of gunfire, blood, or foul play of any kind."

Starsky sighed and covered burning eyes with his hand. "Course they did. And when they were asked about a guard named Skeeter…"

"They claimed you had never been hired. Hutch had never been institutionalized."

"What about Orlando?"

Dobey shook his head, "There was no way to get to him without raising suspicion that he was involved."

Starsky buried his face in his hands.

"We're at a stalemate. We've got to wait." Dobey said, hating the words, even as he said them. "Let things cool down. Let them think they're back in control-"

"Okay."

"Hmm?"

"Okay...I hear ya."

Starsky sounded tired, worn down. Dobey felt himself giving up his own end of the fight and was relieved to hear the faintest ring of common sense coming into his detective's tone.

"Am I gonna have to order you back to your room?" Dobey asked, before slowly getting to his feet.

"Can I stay here?"

Dobey's face softened, around the eyes, the expression hidden from the man still clinging casually to the windowsill. "Just don't give those nurses any trouble."

"Captain Dobey…" Starsky declared, his hand on his chest, exaggerated shock on his face. "Would I cause trouble?"

Dobey grunted and walked toward the elevator, hitting the down button. "Stay put in this hospital tonight, Starsky. That's an order."

"Yes sir." Starsky said to the wall then tossed a quiet, "Good night" over his shoulder.

The doors closed and for the first time in three days Dobey felt himself begin to relax.

That night he slept well, in the comfort of his own bed, by his beautiful wife. At six am the following morning he checked in on Hutch's condition and was told that the wounded detective had woken some time during the night, and was considered stable enough to be moved. He was told Starsky was with Hutch, and had been all night.

When he got to the hospital Dobey was pleased to see the red Torino still in the lot and climbed the stairs to the room Hutch and Starsky now shared.

At the nurse's station he was told that Hutch was stable, but sleeping, and should remain that way.

"And what about Starsky?"

"He, uh, he left you this note."

"He what?"

The note was in an envelope with a set of keys. The keys to the Torino. It said: "Give these to Hutch. He'll need them."

**********************

Starsky drove the rented '68 Ford Station Wagon out of Bay City. It looked beat up enough that the rental company wouldn't notice a new ding or two, and common enough he wouldn't attract too much attention. Getting out of the hospital, across town, on foot, to a bank and then his apartment, had taken most of the morning, and by afternoon he was bogged down at the rental agency.

Dark fell quickly and he spent the night in a two-bit hotel room with a pair of scissors, cutting his hair as short as it would go without leaving bald patches. Further up the road he bought a used hunting rifle the next morning, along with shells and food, conversing with the lonely old man that ran both the fishing/hunting store and the general store.

The old man sold him the gun at half its price, owing to the fact that Starsky was paying in cash, and that he had "an honest face." Starsky hoped the man never encountered a dishonest face, certain he wouldn't see it coming.

When Starsky, after leaving the store, returned and bought twenty cans of aerosol paint, the old man looked like he was questioning his own judgement. Starsky just smiled, hoping he wouldn't have to lie to the old man, and grateful that the octogenarian didn't ask.

Back on the road, Starsky drove the station-wagon into the hills, uneasy but determined. It was strange, heading into the hill country without Hutch in the seat next to him, sighing happily every few seconds. More than once Starsky found himself smiling at a memory, seconds away from saying out loud, "You remember that time…" It was like Hutch's ghost was following him and the man wasn't even dead.

Starsky drove into the mountains until darkness fell, parked the car off the side of the road, pulled out a blanket and slept for the night, stretched out on the front seat. The next morning he drove until he found a cabin road that looked sufficiently deserted.

Halfway down there was a metal gate, secured by a chain with no lock. He opened the gate and drove through, ignoring the procedural boundaries he was crossing. Reminding himself of all the good excuses he could come up with, if he needed them, to explain his actions.

Moderate insanity caused by fever and fatigue was fixed favorably at the top.

The cabin only had three-quarters of its roof.

Starsky told himself it was a crime scene and forced the door open, braving the scatter of mice and the fluster of an owl taking flight. Three of the four rooms were intact, if covered in cobwebs and mouse droppings. The hole in the roof could be patched well enough to keep the birds out. The chimney tugged at the flame from a match. It would do, he decided.

From then on thinking like the old Starsky went out the window. It became about the mechanics of things. How many sweeps of the dusty broom he'd found in the corner, did it take to clean from one end of a floorboard to the other? Multiply that by the number of floorboards and he could look forward to the end of that chore, by counting the sweeps.

He encountered the problem of fresh water for fifteen seconds, waiting for the groaning, knocking pipes to respond. Rusty, ice-cold liquid spewed into the basin of the kitchen sink, then slowly went clear. There was no hot water. Or wouldn't be, unless he boiled it himself. But he hadn't planned on shaving, and could go without a hot shower.

"Water, food, heat, shelter. I'm the modern Robinson Crusoe." He told himself that night, turning a circle in the light of the fire he'd built. He ate beans heated in the can and studied a topography map of the area, orienting and fiddling with the compass the old man had given him, gratis. He drew a grid in pencil, using the straight line of the gap between the floorboards for an edge and marked the cabin, the prison, the town of Tehachapi and the part of the forest the newspaper had called the prisoners' last sighting.

Each square on the grid was almost 10 square miles.

"Lotta ground to cover, Starsk. And you're no woodsman." He mumbled around the pencil.

Hutch's voice came back. Reminding him that what he was doing was stupid. Reckless. Brainless. "What are you trying to prove?" The voice asked.

Starsky stared at the grid, bisecting each square into smaller sectors. "Just trying to find some dead bodies, Hutch A little treasure hunt."

He barely slept that night. The following morning he dressed in long underwear, jeans, two shirts and wool socks. He pulled on his hiking boots and strapped a knife he'd had with him since his enlistment, to his calf. He threw the rifle over his shoulder with the strap across his chest, keeping a handful of shells in his pocket. But the gun was mostly for show. He planned to do most of his shooting with the camera he'd brought.

"Compass, rifle, shells, knife, map, camera, paint...brain." Starsky snapped his fingers. "Knew I forgot something."

Stepping out into the cold, dim morning he methodically searched the four bisected grids closest to the cabin. The first search was two-fold in purpose. To make sure he was as alone as he hoped he'd be, and to see if one of the things the old man had mentioned was true. That the cabins were mostly used by wolf trappers, who had a tendency to leave their traps out, year round.

He managed not to see, or step in, anything that bit that first day and returned to the cabin after sundown, via the spray-painted blazes he'd left on the trees. Even with the markers, hiking in the dark turned out to be a bad idea. Blind fumbling in the wild turned into blind fumbling in the cabin, and he slept that night without dinner or a fire. At first light he put flame to kindling in the fire place and decided, that was never going to happen again.

That morning, while he ravenously ate his way through a quarter loaf of bread, Starsky calculated the mileage he could cover in so many hours, drawing sweeping arches over the blocks on the map. Starting with the most obvious places, a search would take half a day's hike from the cabin, and as much time or more to cover the area before returning. Some of those points could be reached from the road to the prison but the area he really wanted to see, he would have to hike a full day to reach, or try to sneak in past the prison walls.

"And we, Starsky, are smart enough to know that that is a truly stupid idea." He studied the map most of the day, spending the rest of the time fixing the parts of the cabin that he could.

The following morning, and for two mornings after, he hiked along a vector of grids that brought him slowly, but steadily closer to the prison. He used little of the film in the camera, hesitant to use up space that might be needed for identification purposes later. Each hike meant a downward serpentine in the morning and an upward straight shot, guided by the blazes, as afternoon fell to evening. By the end of day eight he'd gone as far down as he could safely go and still return to the cabin before total darkness. He'd also found a second shelter. The lean-to was smaller and in worse shape than the cabin, but equally as abandoned.

The road he had hoped would be accessible with the station wagon petered out at the site of a massive tree fall. He spent the remainder of the 8th day on the mountain covering the distance between the cabin and the lean-to twice, each time carrying everything he could fit into his knapsack, over his shoulders, or under his arms.

That evening he sat by an open fire, watching a tiny space of star-scattered sky between fir branches.

"I need a pipe." He said, craning his neck upward.

"A pipe."

"Yeah, you know with the...the corncob bowl and the long stem out to here and...sweet smelling tobacco."

"You wouldn't know how to smoke it."

"That's not the point, Hutch. The point is...the aesthetic. The Americ-"

"If you say Americana…" The threat, along with the imagined conversation, hung in the air, echoing in the darkness and not for the first time Starsky wondered what he was doing there.

"Solving the case?" The imaginary voice suggested helpfully.

Starsky smirked, his elbows propped on his knees. "Know the guy so well, he's in my head."

The next morning, the first sector turned up a body. At first it looked like the mangled corpse of a deer, straight limbs stuck in strange positions. As he got closer, Starsky recognized details. Splayed fingers with flesh swollen by decay and cold. The bony points of a knee, bent with the foot flat against the leaves. Most of the clothing was still there. Still recognizable as a guard's uniform. Wolves, or whatever ate dead things in this part of the woods, had been at the body.

The knee was bent toward the sky because the owner had been trapped there. The teeth of a wolf trap still held the leg upright, the only thing keeping the body from being dragged away by an opportunistic scavenger.

Caught between a frenzy and the need to keep stone still, Starsky filled a roll of film then marked the trees around the site. He stood in the miniature crime scene he had created, certain he hadn't done enough. He found a stick and jabbed it into the soft ground, then pulled his hand away and waited for it to fall. An hour later he had surrounded the body with a fence of twigs and branches.

He returned early to the lean-to that afternoon, elevating the gun and the supplies he wouldn't take with him to the cabin, and carrying the rest on his back. He left the camera in it's watertight case with the rifle, tucking the film into his jean's pocket. He covered the ground at a staggering run until dark, reaching the cabin by what felt like 9pm. Starsky threw his sac into the back seat of the station wagon and stepped behind the wheel, driving down the mountain road with the lights off, eyes accustomed to the darkness.

He studied the town from a rise a mile away, feeling feral and paranoid. He tried to remember if Robinson Crusoe was paranoid, and watched the town go to sleep until only a few lights remained on. Cruising through the town he found the brightest light, a single street lamp hanging over a large, three story building that served as the public library, the police station and the post office.

All he cared about was the pay-phone, bolted to the street light.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

"Captain Dobey's office." There was a long silence, then the captain tried again, "Hello?"

Starsky cleared his throat, then carefully said, "...Hey, Cap."

For two minutes he listened to the captain breathing on the other end of the line. Measured breaths that spoke volumes.

"Most people would have you committed, Starsky." Dobey said finally.

"Yeah, I know, Cap." Starsky swallowed, then carefully added, "If you need a way to make it look good, I've had a typed and signed resignation in my desk for the past three years. You just have to date it."

"I need to know why you left your partner in the hospital and disappeared into thin air for 9 days." Dobey barked, struggling to keep his voice down, while still seething.

"I found one of the bodies. I think it's Horvitz, but the body is in a guard's uniform. I took a roll of pictures and I put up a stake fence around the body but...animals have already been at it."

"Does anybody know you're there?"

Starsky shook his head. "No. I've been...camping."

"Huh!" Dobey said, then took a deep breath that echoed through the phone.

"How's Hutch?"

"I should make you come see for yourself after what you've put us through." Dobey said.

Starsky pressed his lips together, then felt his cheeks start to burn, and couldn't help the grin as he pointedly said, "Us?"

"No more complications. He's been awake more and more each day. And mad."

Starsky's grin widened, stretching against 9 days of sun and wind damage. "He's really mad, huh?"

"He saw the keys to that Torino of yours and wanted to know what you'd done with his car?"

"Tell him it's safe and sound. I never touched it." Starsky beamed.

"You need to tell him. You need to get back here."

"I do that, those other bodies could be completely gone by the time IA is finished wringing my neck."

"And what are a couple of photos snapped with a Brownie gonna prove?"

"It's a Kodak. And maybe nothin', not with only one body. Captain, Ackabee had to cover his tracks and claim a prison break, because these deaths were leaked to the press. That doesn't mean they were the first men to die, just the first that anybody missed."

"Who dropped the dime?"

"That's the point, I don't know. Even Orlando didn't know. I can't know until I find the rest of the bodies and get them identified."

Dobey was quiet for a few minutes, then took in a deep breath. "We're going to make a deal, David. Between you and me. And then this is never going to happen again."

Starsky suddenly felt like he was 8-years-old, standing in the shadow of his father, knowing he'd done wrong, fearing the punishment, yet fearing his father's abandonment all the more.

"Ok." He said finally.

"I expect you in my office by 8pm tomorrow evening. Between now and then I don't care what you do as long as you meet with the sheriff in Tehachapi and report the location of the body."

"Ok."

"When you get here, we're going take a look at that resignation, and then we're gonna burn it."

Starsky smiled, the expression tight in a face that hadn't moved much in over a week. "Okay." He said again.

"Then you are going to sit in that hospital, every waking hour that you are not on duty, until your partner is able to walk out on his own."

"They don't let you walk out, Cap, they make you ride in a-"

"Starsky!"

"I'm sorry, Cap, I'm sorry." Starsky swallowed the smile and the strange sense of relief and said, "I am sorry, Cap. I don't-"

"You're not the only one who goes crazy when his partner's life is at stake."

"Hutch wouldn'ta done this."

"Don't count on it. Eight pm, tomorrow."

"Night, Captain."

Starsky set the phone in the cradle and took a deep breath of chilly mountain air. He looked to the sky, surprised to see clouds covering the stars that had kept him company most of the night. The police station was behind him but it was a cinch that in a town of that size there wouldn't be anyone on duty until morning.

He was climbing into the station wagon, considering where he would sleep for the night when the first fat snowflake landed on the windshield. More followed rapidly. Cold, wet, clumps of snowflakes that would cover the mountain roads, discourage local police from being willing to go on wild goose chases and obscure crime scenes.

Starsky sat and watched the street go from brown to white in a matter of minutes. Then his stomach rumbled painfully and he knew he had to make an effort to get back to the cabin, a warm fire, and hot food. He couldn't rely on the hospitality of the natives. With a prison so close to the town, no citizen of Tehachapi was going to take in a stranger. He turned on the wipers to clear the front windshield, but could do nothing about the back. The tires held out against the snow and the roads cleared a little as he started to climb, protected by tree cover.

He was creeping up the mountain road, squinting at each turn off, hoping he would instinctively recognize the one for the cabin, but the snow had already begun to alter the appearance of landmarks. The sight of the crooked tree, the broken mailbox and the gate further down the road came as a relief. Living in the east might have kept snow from being a novelty, but he'd never really driven in it.

Instead of opening the gate and driving through he collected his supplies from the backseat, planning to hike to the cabin. He'd gone twenty feet down the cabin road, past the gate when he heard another car engine and turned to see a jeep, with its lights out, pull in behind the station wagon.

Starsky backtracked into the woods, breathing hard, watching four men climb out of the jeep, each with rifles.

They went to the station wagon, the lead man smashing the front window to get at the locks, before they went through the front and back of the car efficiently stripping it of any identification. Then they doused the seats with accelerant and set the car on fire.

Starsky started running the moment the gallon jugs of gasoline left the jeep. He covered the ground to the cabin, then oriented from there and took off for the lean-to, guided by the blazes and the moonlight reflecting off the snow. Already 2 inches had covered the ground, hiding tree falls and rocks. Halfway to the lean-to Starsky's foot went into a hole, his momentum wedged his leg between the weight of two giant trunks and his knee twisted before he could stop his forward momentum.

Something popped and pain flared up his leg, driving a shout out of him that he couldn't stop.

The pain overwhelmed everything for a moment, making him forget his fear, forget the body, forget the prison, his promise to Dobey. Starsky put both palms down against the two tree trunks, quaking as he took his weight onto his hands. He brought his left foot up and pushed himself back out of the vice grip and up, twisting at the waist until he could perch on one of the trunks. There was an odd bump at his right knee, a weird twist to the leg that told him he'd have to hurt a whole lot more before he could hope to walk.

The woods behind him were empty, void of voices or bodies, but all it would take was one enterprising man among them to notice the blazes and follow the obvious trail he'd left.

They hadn't hesitated before setting the car on fire. Not for a moment. Starsky had no doubt they would make his death swift and efficient if that was any part of their plan.

Carefully he lowered himself to the ground on the other side of the two trunks, not wanting to do what he had to do.

"Stupid, Starsky. Ya dummy. H-hutch hears about this he's gonna laugh til his teeth hurt. God…"

Starsky forced air in and out of his lungs, building up what courage he could before he told himself to count to three. He tried to twist his leg back into place on 2, but didn't have the strength or the leverage. The pain left him shaking, soaking with sweat and ready to pass out.

He looked behind him, over the mound of snow that covered the tree trunk, at the hole that had caused the problem. It would take every muscle in his body to put his knee back. The tight space between the tree branches that had caused the injury, would be his last hope of fixing it before he passed out.

Moving by inches Starsky hoisted himself back onto the trunk, turning carefully and slipping his wounded leg into the crag. Forcing it into the tightest part of the crag would hurt, so would twisting his whole body until the joint snapped back into place.

"Do it all at one time." Starsky told himself, glancing up the mountainside again. He ripped his hat off, stuffed it into his mouth, then spared himself the count and did it. His voice cracked when he screamed into the cloth of the hat. Then he couldn't breathe and had to spit it out.

He let himself pant, huge puffs of condensing air competing with the snowflakes falling in front of him. Tears that the pain had produced coated his face, giving the snowflakes someplace to rest. Nausea had hit him, threatening to spill still-uneaten meals on the tree trunk, but he stayed rooted long enough to avoid it.

When he could, Starsky freed himself from the trunks in a move that was now familiar to him, sank down on the opposite side, and noticed the dry, snow-free space under the trunks that was just big enough for a man to lie in.

For a few minutes he sat in the middle of a forest, snow collecting on his head while he considered his options.

"Starsky…" He told himself between breaths. "This is the first time, and the last time that you are sleeping under a tree trunk on the side of a mountain."

No one responded. The woods were quiet enough that he could hear the snowflakes hitting the ground.

"You should also," Starsky said, digging through his pack for the two blankets at the bottom. "...stop talking to yourself."

He wrapped both blankets around his shoulders and secured his hat on his head before he slowly crawled under the trunks. He dragged his bag in with him, not sure if the cold he didn't yet feel would overwhelm the raw ache in his knee at any point.

Either the men that had burned the car hadn't seen him, or had chosen against following him in the snow. He lay awake for an hour undisturbed until sleep claimed him.

He woke at dawn, terrified.

The blankets were blissfully warm, the snow and the proximity of the trees enough of a shelter to keep his body heat in. The snow was deep enough that only a small window remained out which he could see the dim light of the sun. The woods around him were quiet, yet he couldn't slow his heart rate.

Starsky closed his eyes tight and forced air through clenched teeth, trying to rationally calm himself. He reminded himself of the blazes, the lean-to and the rifle hidden there, the map in his bag, the compass. All the things that would get him out of the woods. That would get him home. As the terror subsided he began to feel the cold, the dull ache in his knee, a headache waiting to bloom behind his eyes and the hunger.

He drew a deep breath in through his nose, then blinked at the pervasive smell that greeted him. Wood smoke. Wood smoke meant people, yet Starsky couldn't hear anything.

Moving hurt, but he managed to do it quietly and peered through the round hole the snowfall had left him. It was still falling beyond his 'cave', spiraling in tiny flakes that seemed insignificant compared to hours before. He couldn't see the lean-to but the blazes on the trees leading to it were painfully obvious.

He had no way of knowing where the smoke was coming from and began to feel the panic rising, when a gust of wind blew through the veil of snow, showing him the smoke's origin. Up the mountain. The cabin.

Starsky settled back into his shelter for a moment and looked at the balloon that had swollen overnight, where his right knee used to be. Still hiding in his cave he opened a can of peaches and ate his way through it, accompanying the meal with two slices of bread, and some jerky. He would have compared it to any caviar, lobster or sirloin Hutch might have put in front of him, and still considered it the best meal he'd eaten.

He cleaned the peach can out with snow and tucked it back into his bag, folded one of the blankets into the bag, and kept the other over his shoulders.

Getting out of the snow 'cave' meant plunging his bare hands into the frozen white stuff without gloves, but then he hadn't been expecting a snowstorm. The snow was wet enough to pack and before long he had a solid sill at the bottom of the opening that made the cave feel a little more permanent, in case he needed it again. Standing was a complicated process, accomplished in stages, with resting periods, but when he did finally emerge the world around him was covered in white, and still devoid of people.

Starsky searched the ground and the sky carefully before he stepped out into the open. His first step was a doozy, the snow deep, wet and heavy. The combination of the snow, the unseen pitfalls and the state of his knee made it almost impossible to move. The biggest problem was the drag of the snow on his right boot whenever he tried to take a step forward. Any pressure on the swollen joint meant pain that after a few steps exhausted him.

He went forward all the same, step by tiring step, until he reached the lean-to. The snow had collapsed part of the roof, knocking his elevated supplies to the ground and burying the rifle and the camera. It took an hour to clear out the snow, his hands blood red from the cold. He pressed them into his armpits and rocked back and forth on the floor of the lean-to until the burning at his fingertips eased, and he could feel the rest of his hands as well.

"Oh what a mess..."

Maybe the men had been locals, territorial about their cabin and given to trouble making. The jeep could have followed him up without Starsky knowing. The back window of the station wagon had been completely covered with snow, and the jeep's lights out, when it pulled into the drive. It was their unflinching intent that had Starsky convinced, the night before, that they were connected with the prison. They had done it before, and they'd looked sober...almost professional...or had that been the fear rewriting the scene?

"Can't spend another night out here." He told himself, closing his eyes as the first rays of sunlight reached him. With the sky clear, at that elevation, the mountain would warm up fast. Maybe the snow would melt. Maybe his knee would loosen up, hurt a little less without so much dragging on it. Maybe Santa would fly by in his sleigh and offer him a ride.

But no, it was March. Santa was vacationing in Bora Bora.

"That takes care of one of the maybes."

Once the sun was high enough to warm the lean-to a little, Starsky unbundled himself and pulled out the map, figuring the shortest route to a road. On two good legs, with the snow as deep as it was, it would take him four hours to get out. He multiplied the number by two, then reminded himself about the prison, its proximity to the town, and the untrusting nature of the locals.

He would be on his feet for a long time.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

"I expected him to check in with your office first thing. It's almost noon!" Dobey barked into the phone, glancing angrily at the clock in his office.

The voice on the other end seemed unaffected by his anger and responded with an even tone, tinged by the accent of the Kawaiisu, the natives that once occupied the valley the town sat in.

"I'm sorry, chief. No detective, and no note. We got a lotta snow last night, and that's a lotta mountain to cover. Give him til tonight, after some of the snow melts."

"Captain!" Dobey growled, "I'm not the chief. My man was there to report a dead body. I suppose the snow will stop you from finding that as well."

"In snow, a body keeps well." The sheriff responded, his voice just a hair more interested. "If it was so important, why would your detective go back into the mountains?"

"What would you do if you found a man you didn't know, sleeping in a car on the streets of a town only a few miles from a maximum security prison?"

"Arrest him." The sheriff said.

"Starsky's never been fond of being arrested." Dobey retorted, then took a deep breath and stared at what remained of his fifth cup of coffee that day. He was ripping into a man he had never met, who was only doing his job, and it wasn't good. Dobey eyed the water cooler by the door then sighed.

"Captain Dobey, as soon as I can get a vehicle up the mountain I will check the cabin roads, but much of the mountain is only accessible on foot. There is also the risk of avalanche, the snowfall was heavy."

Dobey nodded then said, apologetically, "That's all I ask."

"Is there anything else?"

Dobey took in a breath then hesitated before saying, "Sheriff Samara, how much communication do you have with the prison?"

Samara thought for a moment before he said, "They police themselves. They are supposed to warn us when there is a riot or a prison break so that we can shut down the roads."

"And how many times has that happened, say in the past two years?"

"Once...four months ago."

"Was there anything strange about the call?"

"Other than the fact that it came after the newspaper printed the story, not much."

"What's the name of your newspaper there?" Dobey asked.

"The Tehachapi News."

"Do you have the number?"

"No. Even if I did, I wouldn't be able to get you in touch with the reporter that wrote the story."

"Why is that?"

"Because, Captain Dobey, after he wrote that story, he skipped town."

*****************************

It might have been one o'clock in the afternoon, or closer to two. Starsky had slipped on ice hiding under the snow and went down hard, tumbling down a bald incline that tore one of the straps on his bag, knocked his head against a rock, turned his knee into a fireball and ended with the rifle snagging and the strap snapping against his chest.

By the time the world stopped spinning, he was able to narrow the sources of pain down to three: the left side of his face, the back of his head, and his knee. The back of his head sported a slow-growing lump, but the side of his face had been broken open, blood trickling slowly down into the stubble on his chin. Judging by the pain alone he could tell his knee was still in place, but he'd gained a bloody gash there as well. Gingerly he wiped at the mess with handfuls of snow until he could see the jagged edges. Ugly, but not too deep. He cleaned his face the same way, lost in a battle between loving and hating snow.

It might have saved Hutch's life, but it had made his own hell. And yet...after dumping him down the side of a mountain, it was taking the edge off the pain it had caused and slowing the bleeding.

Wasn't it the Eskimos, he thought, that had multiple names for snow? Each name was supposed to describe the character, or the use they got out of the stuff. Starsky scooped up a handful and eyed it speculatively then declared, "Solicitor Snow, never turn your back on it."

He'd spilled some supplies on his way down, but nothing he couldn't live without. The rifle strap was now useless, the metal loop that attached it to the stock had been bent by the pressure. He pocketed the strap, did what he could to secure the pack on his back again then carefully got to his feet. His first step with his right leg was agonizing and the gun soon became a crutch that he made sure was empty.

The denser the trees, the easier it was to move, using the rifle and a neighboring trunk like crutches and keeping his right foot off the ground altogether. The seat of his jeans had been damp, and then just cold, as a result of the number of times he had to sit down to get over a log, past a rock or to rest after a misstep. Still, he was moving. The problem was that the earth was moving to, revolving more precisely, and stealing from him precious hours of warmth and light. Before darkness fell he knew he wasn't going to see road before midnight.

He stood, leaning against a tree while he studied the weathered map, debating the risk of going on in the dark, versus using what remained of the day to build a fire, cook food, make a decent, dry bed. He made his decision a hard mile later, finding a treefall with dry ground under it, and plenty of wood around to get a fire going.

He kept the fire as small as he could, remembering every cowboy movie he'd ever seen. He cooked twice as much food as he had eaten in the past twenty-four hours and ate most of it, keeping a snow-filled sock on the swelling in his knee. He melted snow in the cans, drinking as much as he could hold and filling the thin, metal canteen that had its own pocket on the outside of the pack. Every move, every chore, every action was accompanied with a thin veil of paranoia.

Why the fire? Why destroy the car then leave him be? Was the assumption simply that the mountain would kill him? They'd been too close not to have followed him up the mountain road. They had to know he was out here. Were they waiting? Following? Biding their time until nature had her way with him and they could go home?

Harder than the physical pain, the cold, and the aching weariness was the paranoia. He couldn't do anything to relieve it, and despite the warmth of the blankets and the fire, and the numbing bliss of the snow, he barely slept.

***********************************

"Hutchinson! What the hell are you doing?"

Pale, sweating, but miraculously on his feet, Hutch flinched at the volume of Dobey's unrest and quietly muttered, "Using the bathroom."

"You're not supposed to be on your feet." Dobey declared, mad enough that he almost missed Hutch's muttered, "Says you."

"What!"

"I-I-I think so too, Captain, but...nature calls."

He'd been given a cane, that he technically wasn't supposed to be using. The bullet had done damage to some of the muscles in his left hip, making his left leg stiff. The added support of the cane was all he'd needed the first time he'd made his own way to the bathroom. He kept that to himself, hoping actions would speak louder than words.

Dobey let him be while he disappeared into the private toilet, used the john and returned, hands and face clean.

Standing in the doorway he gave Dobey a sheepish look then asked, "It's 10 pm, what happened to Starsky tagging along for a while?"

Dobey didn't answer him and it sank in.

Powerful waves of concern and blind anger competed for attention in Hutch's mind before he settled on anger. Because concern was useless. Concern had robbed him of sleep, twisted his guts in knots, wrung pointless tears out of him and created a cobweb of lines on his face. Anger, on the other hand, was fuel. It would get him out of the hospital. Up that mountain. Straight to his partner, whom he intended to punch, then drag back to the city, tie to a chair and yell at...for a month.

"I know what you're thinking, Hutch."

"Yeah? Then I don't have to explain it."

"This is how your partner disappeared. Leaving the hospital before he should have and tearing up to that mountain on a wild goose chase."

"You and I both know why he did it."

"Yeah, and he risked more than just his life doing it, Hutch."

"That's right, he's risking mine now." Hutch said and left the doorway to the john, making his way to the closet where a pair of clean clothes had been stored, in preparation for his release.

"It's a hundred miles to that town, Hutchinson. You can't make a hundred feet."

Hutch sank into the visitor's chair, exhausted but determined, and rested for a moment before he freed one of his arms from the hospital gown and fed it into the shirt.

"You're probably right about that." He agreed matter-of-factly. The left arm was a more careful process, but he managed it, then stared at the pair of jeans thoughtfully.

Dobey stood waiting, arms crossed, eyebrows raised as if to say that Hutch had handily made his point. Hutch stared right back, expectantly, for a few minutes then sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Captain, if it were your wife, your son, your daughter. Would you lie in that hospital bed and let the worry eat at ya until you couldn't breathe anymore?"

The captain's stance relaxed and he let his arms drop.

"Now, Starsk found one of the bodies. He found what he went up there to find. I know him, Captain. He wouldn't still be out there, unaccounted for, unless he didn't have a choice. Maybe that means he's hurt. Maybe that means he's been waylaid, or...or kidnapped, or attacked by a bear." Hutch stopped for a moment, his mouth snapping shut, while he swallowed past a sudden tightness. "But the longer I have to lie there and wonder, the longer it's going to take for me to ever leave this hospital again-" Hutch turned his head, working to force the tremble out of his lips and reigning everything in.

"If we leave this hospital," Dobey said carefully, "...every move we make, is going to further compromise what little of a case we have. It's going to compromise my reputation as your captain, your reputation as a detective, Starky's reputation as your partner…"

Hutch started to interrupt but Dobey put up his hand. "I will drive you up there as soon as you can manage to get a pair of pants on, Hutch. And we won't come back until we've got him. But that other stuff...you let enough of it pile up and there will come a time when there is nothing that I can do to save your careers. Being a cop is more than what you do, Hutch. It's the same with Starsky. I see it every day. That's why he's up there now."

"Are you….asking me to make a choice, Captain."

Dobey sighed and shook his head, "MMmm. Just...something I had to get off my chest, I guess."

Hutch was quiet for a moment, sitting in the semi-darkness of the room, yet still in the shadow of the man he hadn't yet found reason to lose faith in.

"Couple years down the road, do ya...mind if I use that speech on a rookie sometime?"

Dobey snorted softly, a weary smile stretching his lips. "Rookies wouldn't understand it, the way they're making them these days." Dobey sighed. "I know Starsky is usually the one who dresses you, but would you like my help with those."

Hutch blinked, his brow wrinkling. "Starsky doesn't dress me."

"You mean you pick those clothes out yourself?"

"Aha...funny, Cap. Funny."


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

It was deja vu. His eyes snapped open, his heart raced, his pupils dilated to take in as much light as possible, only this time there was a payoff. Just out of the dying firelight, crouched and still, was the silhouette of a man Starsky had never met before. The gun was behind the detective, tucked in against the fallen trees, along with the pack, returning a hint of control to Starsky. He reminded himself that he had to breathe and sucked air into his lungs.

The oxygen hit his brain and the rest of the muscles in his body began to loosen, letting him move, letting him think. He shifted, pulling the blankets closer to his chin. His left hip hurt, pressed against the ground for so long, but it was the only way he could lie with little pain. He shifted, an inch at a time until some of the pressure eased, and watched the silhouette.

"Want more wood on your fire?" It asked.

Starsky stared at the coals for a second, watching a handful of sparks fly up, then said, "Sure."

The silhouette moved, sitting cross-legged on the ground and tossing a handful of sticks onto the coals. They smoked, then caught, tiny flames spreading the pool of light until Starsky could see a military style boot, creased pants, and the tips of five fingers.

His voice was gravelly, the result of too little sleep, too much cold, a hard scream or two. Starsky cleared his throat and said, "Don't tell me I'm trespassing under your log…"

The shadow was rooting around behind its back, collecting some things that turned out to be more firewood. The sticks were held just inside the ring of light while the voice said, "No, but this is a protected forest. You'll have to leave that log here when you go."

The shadow leaned forward, scattering the new tinder over the old and Starsky caught the flash of a badge peeking out from under the white wool of a lined leather jacket. A face materialized above it as the flames grew. A long straight jaw and nose to match, dark black hair worn long, and pulled back in a pony tail. Dark brown eyes that slammed into his. The man could have been thirty or sixty and Starsky wouldn't have laid so much as a dime on his own guess.

"You are Detective Starsky." The man said.

"And you're Sheriff Whats-his-name-"

"Samara."

"Samara.." Starsky repeated, suddenly fighting to breathe again. "How long have you been on the mountain?"

"In general, or recently?"

"Today." Starsky said, testily, yet he felt a smirk hit his face a second later.

"Your Captain Dobey called me at midday. I left my office at 2pm to respond to a report of foul smelling smoke on the mountain."

"The car?"

"And the cabin."

The breathlessness hit hard and Starsky started gasping. His right hand flew up, and he forced himself onto his left elbow and forward, wheezing like a fish out of water. The sheriff moved, circling the fire in two steps. In one smooth effort he helped Starsky into a sitting position and sat with his right shoulder in the middle of Starsky's back, propping him upright.

Starsky panted, swallowing air as fast as he could until, gradually, the dark edges around his vision disappeared.

"What the hell...was that?"

Samara shrugged the shoulder not occupied and said, "Either you smoke too much, Detective Starsky, or you just had a panic attack."

Finally able to rest his diaphragm for a second or two between breaths Starsky worked at grounding himself. "Never had one of those before."

"How long you been a cop?"

"Eight years...give or take."

"You're about due."

Starsky laughed, once, then twice, then a string of sounds that brought more relief to his aching chest than anything else. "Thanks."

Samara was smirking slightly when Starsky reached for a handhold and pulled himself away.

The detective held on for a moment, letting his head hang and his eyes close, wondering how it was possible that he could be terrified of being terrified.

"What else is wrong with you?" The sheriff asked.

Starsky opened his eyes again, feeling the tiredness finally seep back into his mind. It felt like sweet heaven to be tired, instead of terrified and he let it wash over him, carefully laying back until he was propped on his elbows. "Cuts, bruises, hungry, tired. Dislocated that bum, there." He said, pointing at his right knee.

Samara shifted away from a sudden draft of smoke and fished around for more wood. "Where did that happen?"

"About 3 miles from the cabin." Starsky said, finally laying all the way down again. Sighing at the sudden ease of getting oxygen into his lungs. Like he'd been born to it.

Samara stopped fishing and froze for a moment, then carefully set the new firewood around the flames in the shape of a four-sided pyramid. "You covered 15 miles on a torn-up knee, Starsky. That's pretty good for a city guy."

Starsky gave a wry smile. "Actually it was 14 ½ miles. I cheated a little when I fell down the mountain a mile back."

Samara reached into the pockets of his coat and produced two tins of Spam. "I collected your trash for you. It's a crime to litter."

"Oh God, please arrest me."

Samara broke into a broad smile, then a laugh that brought Starsky's head off the ground, and his brows together. When the sheriff noticed his questioning look the man shrugged. "This is a story I will have to share with your Captain Dobey."

Starsky grunted and lowered his head. "At my expense, I'm sure."

"You also dropped some of these." Samara said producing three jacketed bullets. "You have a rifle?"

Starsky's focus flitted from the sheriff's hand to his face before he said, "Yeah. Been using it as a crutch mostly." He carefully lifted the rifle from its hiding place, passing it over his body and into the sheriff's hands. Samara looked the gun over, checked the chamber and the action then gave it back. He held his hand out next, waiting for Starsky's palm to open before he dropped the shells into it.

"That Station-wagon is not the first burnt out car I've found. Lighting the cabin was foolish though. It burned hotter, threatened the dead trees. It was the cabin fire that our spotters saw."

Starsky blinked then stared confused at the sheriff. "I didn't set those fires."

"I know."

"Do you know who did?"

"No."

"Oh."

"But I know the name of the man who told them to do it."

"Oh?"

The sheriff nodded, clearly pleased with himself.

Starsky waited a few minutes then pursed his lips in annoyance and closed his eyes.

"Do you wanna know who?"

"Well sure," Starsky said, "...but why spoil the ending?"

"A man named Ackabee."

Starsky stiffened, expecting the panicked feeling to come back. Expecting his lungs to seize and his world to blacken. When it didn't, he opened his mouth to speak...and was cut off.

"Ackabee owns the land the cabin sat on. He's bought out most of the wolf trappers in the area."

"How long have you known that?"

"Since midday. Those were the only official records I could find for a man named Ackabee."

"We're talking about the same Ackabee that is the captain of the guard at Tehachapi-at the state prison?"

The sheriff shrugged. "Jack Ackabee?"

"That's the guy." Starsky said, and stared up at the sky. "He's building his own little paradise out here."

"I don't know much about what goes on behind those walls. But that's usually what it means when a man buys twelve pieces of property in the middle of a state protected forest."

"So how'd you find me?"

"Your graffiti."

"Graffit-oh."

"And your fire." Samara said. "You picked a logical path toward the road, and kept true."

"And there wasn't anybody else on my trail? Big mean bruiser types, say, with cans of gasoline?"

Samara shook his head, pursing his lips.

"Huh."

They were silent a moment, the fire crackling between them. Samara took a breath and brightly asked, "Do you want to get off the mountain?"

Starsky blinked, lifted his head so that he could see his swollen knee, then said, "Given my current state, it would probably be wise."

Samara shrugged. "Can you ride? I brought horses."

Starsky frowned again and reached up for the handhold, pulling himself up until he could see beyond the ridge of the log. Two horses stood tied to a tree, saddled.

"Huh. Ok."

By Samara's watch it was 3:30am by the time Starsky's barebones camp had been cleaned up, and the fire buried in snow. Samara offered to help Starsky on the horse but the detective insisted he could handle it, and after a few painful tries, managed to get mounted.

"Keep your pace slow. Let your horse pick the way. He can see only a little better than you can. Also...keep that rifle handy." Samara coached before clicking to his horse.

Starsky's animal followed Samara's obediently and they rode quietly through the early morning darkness, Samara focused on the trail, and Starsky on keeping his knee from knocking against the saddle.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Wasn't it kinda dangerous, coming up here to look for me?"

"Wasn't it kinda dangerous, looking for dead bodies by yourself?" Samara asked in return.

"Hey, I asked first."

"You asked for permission to query, you didn't ask for an answer."

The dodgy response reminded Starsky of something and he was quiet for a moment before he said, "Ackabee told me something, my first day on the job….my only day on the job. We were talking about avalanches and he said...all it takes is the feet of one crow to leave a mark."

Samara rode ahead of him, silent for a long while, casually rocking with the horse's gait. When he pulled to a stop, Starsky brought his horse even with Samara's then pulled back gently on the reins.

"My ancestors would say, the way to avoid the destruction of the white man is to pretend he isn't there. They once welcomed the white man...and his city now blooms where ours once thrived. Here I am, proudly honoring my ancestors...and the white man is buying my mountain out from under me. Stealing my ancestor's wisdom and parsing it out to more white men."

Starsky shrugged, "Sticking your head in the sand only works for so long."

Samara gave him a strange look then asked, "How old are you, Sergeant Starsky?"

"37. "

"And what do you want to be when you grow up?"

"Ha! I already am what I want to be. A cop."

"What do you want to be when you grow old?"

"Retired. In a nursing home. With lots of pretty nurses."

"In your mind, Starsky, you're not 37. You are 69." Samara said, clicking to his horse again.

"What makes you say that?"

"A younger man would have said, 'I won't grow old. I'd rather die young.'"

Starsky sat his horse for a long time, then made the clicking noise with his tongue and quietly said, "That's just silly."


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

They rode for an hour in silence, watching the false dawn come and go. Starsky found himself obsessively going over his encounter with the arsonists at the cabin. They had followed him up the mountain...when had he picked up the tail? Were they already heading that way, and just noticed his car? If they were going to the burn the cabin anyway, did they just figure on a two-for-one sale and took out the rented Station-wagon?

He winced when the horse stumbled a step, knocking his knee into the saddle, and in the back of his mind he felt his bank account cringing. Rental. A rental that the rental company was never going to get back.

"How do you feel about coffee, Detective?"

"I'm a fan." Starsky admitted, willingly taking the distraction. "I got a jar of the instant stuff in my bag."

"We'll stop when we reach the road. Rest, til after sunrise."

Starsky frowned a little, thinking about the effort and pain he would go through getting off the horse, then back on it again. "Don't tell me you're tired."

"I been up all night."

Starsky snorted, wondering if he was tired. He couldn't tell, competing with so many other pressing needs. Speaking of…"When'd ya say we were gonna stop?"

But when he looked up Samara had frozen. His horse was turned sideways and his eyes were trained on the hill above them.

"Is your rifle loaded, Detective?" Samara asked quietly.

"No…" Starsky said, then felt through his pockets and quietly pushed shells into the breech.

He was still at it, trying to force stiff fingers into action when Samara asked, "Can you really ride that horse? Fast?"

"I can fake it, if I have to." Starsky said, glancing toward Samara's face then back to the rifle. "You armed?"

"I got my Webley."

"You carry a Webley?"

Samara flashed him a grin and shrugged, then he pointed along the declining ridge they'd been following. "Follow this straight down, keep it slow til the horses pick up their own pace. You'll find the road."

"Wait, what-?

"I'm the sheriff of this county, Starsky. I'm a busy guy. And I think things will start to get busy soon."

"How many?"

"Three."

"Gasoline tanks?"

"No...guns this time." Samara said, then leaned a little closer to his horse's mane and started the animal moving.

"They on foot?" Starsky asked, following suit.

"Yeah. A mountain horse is very expensive these days."

"These yours?" Starsky asked, feeling the skin on the back of his neck begin to crawl. The breathless feeling was still at bay, and he told himself a panic attack was a one time thing. It wasn't going to happen again.

"My sister's. If we bring them back scratched, she'll take your head off."

"My head?" Starsky muttered.

"She loves me." Samara said, glancing up the mountain without sitting up, then looking to the front again.

"I'm a lovable guy, introduce us."

The sheriff didn't respond turning his horse a little more perpendicular to the ridge.

"I thought you said we're supposed to follow this ridge?"

"We will be safer on the other side of it." Samara said, riding his horse over a flat bit of hard ground, then sitting up straight and leaning back while his horse descended sharply.

The second Starsky straightened to do the same a shot rang out, and a bullet buried itself in a nearby tree with a puff of smoke. Starsky was close enough to the tree to smell burning wood. Both horses jolted and jerked forward. Starsky clung to his horse as they crept over the rise and down into a cut that, later in spring, would be full of water. Below the shelter of the hill Samara had dismounted and was handling his revolver, putting a shell in the chamber under the hammer. Two more shots followed them, sinking into the ridge before the men above them stopped shooting, fresh out of targets.

"How far is this cut gonna get us?" Starsky asked, loathe to dismount just yet.

"To a culvert that runs under the road. We'll have to go that way though, find a ridge the horses can climb."

Starsky twisted in the saddle to look behind him, in the direction that Samara was pointing. "Up, to go down, eh?"

"That is the spirit of the mountain. Do you know what Tehachapi means?"

"You kidding, I can barely pronounce it." Starsky said.

Samara grinned at him and pulled at the reins of his horse, walking it past Starsky's horse and up the cut rather than down. Until he was told otherwise, Starsky assumed he could stay in the saddle, and did so, keeping low to the animal's back. The cut was rocky, more so than the mountainside had been. The horse moved slower and stumbled more, making Starsky's knee a constant source of pain. Still, they were moving faster than they ever could have with the detective on foot.

Starsky judged they'd traveled about a mile across the spine of the mountain before Samara picked up his pace, mounted his horse, and kicked it up the opposite side of the cut. Starsky followed suit, clinging hard to the saddle. Without pausing Samara led them through a dense patch of white fir and deciduous trees and, Starsky realized, very little snow. He'd spent so much time staring at the ground, it came as a surprise to the detective when he glanced up and realized the sky was a light gray. The sun was coming up.

The ground was getting rockier under the horses' hooves, however and Samara slowed his animal, leaning back to take his weight off the forelocks. Starsky went to do the same, felt the horse rock under him, then was blindsided by jolt of pain when the horse's right side brushed up against a tree.

He clung to the saddle horn doing everything in his power not to puke, or scream, or fall out of the saddle. Once the horse shifted away from the trunk, Starsky yanked his right foot from the stirrup, forced his leg over the horse's neck and slid from the saddle to the ground. He kept the reins in his right hand, and clung to the trunk of a white birch with his left, his face closed against the pain until it eased.

"Panic attack?"

"The horse panicked, I didn't panic." Starsky bit out, keeping his back to the sheriff. "I gotta take a leak."

Rocks shifted, closer to him and he felt the sheriff tug the reins out of his hands. The detective waited until both horses were a sufficient distance and took care of the need that had been plaguing him since the sheriff had found him.

When he was done he scanned the ground below them, then the rise above, making his way over the rocks with the help of the trees.

"Ok?"

"Yeah." Starsky said, his hands either side of the saddle. He bounced on his left leg, jumped up, slipped his left foot into the stirrup and gritted his teeth against the effort of dragging the other leg over the horse's hindquarters.

"They're here." Samara said once Starsky's face had eased.

Blue eyes snapped up and Starsky stared at the sheriff's stone expression then nodded understanding. He pulled the rifle from the strap of his bag and finally slid a bullet in front of the hammer, aware that he was potentially relying on a gun he'd still never fired.

They continued their descent, picking up pace as the ground evened out, the trees becoming more sparse, the ground cover turning into dried bushes and weeds. Over the crest of a rise Starsky could see the mountain road a mile or more away, but closer than ever before. The sun was still behind the mountain, but there was enough light to make out the burrs that had been collecting on his jeans, the angry, blood soaked gash in his pant leg, the minute cuts on his hands. That meant he and Samara were easy to spot, and hard to miss.

"Samara…."

"Hmm?"

"If they shoot you...they get the whole county down on their heads." Starsky said, getting his horse closer to Samara, on the uphill side. "And the one thing Ackabee never wanted was publicity."

"Ok."

"So...they're not tryin' to kill you. They're trying to kill me. They can make like they were hunters. It was an accident. Poor, wayward cop gets killed on mountain, case closed."

"That assumes that I am a very stupid sheriff."

Starsky managed a distracted smile while his horse picked its way around a small boulder. "No offense meant...what I'm saying is-"

A shot cut him off. Starsky stiffened, coughed then leaned forward in the saddle and went limp against the horse's mane. For a breathless second Samara froze, Webley out, squinting at the puff of smoke that was lazily drifting down the mountain trying to spot the man who had produced it.

There were no more shots.

"Ok...see, that's my point. First of all.." Starsky whispered, "...they are terrible shots. Second of all...they want me dead. Now, all you gotta do is drag my dead body down the mountain."

Samara took a hard deep breath, let himself calm a little, then walked his horse forward and went through the act of checking for vital signs. Starsky went with it, flopping like a corpse when it was needed. He stiffened a little when he heard the distinct sound of a knife coming out of a sheath.

"What are you doing?!" He whispered.

"They don't see blood, they'll know it's an act."

"Well...you don't have to stab me. Maybe it was a head shot."

There was a pause, then Samara slid the knife back home.

Starsky breathed a sigh of relief, and after Samara said something in his native tongue, they continued down the mountain.

Ten minutes later, Starsky, easily bored by being dead, whispered "Hey...what was that you said back there?"

"I prayed to the spirits of the mountain…"

"Oh...that's nice."

"To forgive me for following the lead of a crazy white man."

"That's...that's not nice."

"Neither is giving the sheriff of the county, a man four years younger than you, a premature heart attack."

"That was hardly my fault, I had to do something before they got a good bead on me-"

"Shh! You're confusing the spirits. Dead men don't talk."

Starsky groaned and closed his eyes, remarkably comfortable but for the pommel of the saddle bouncing against his collarbone. He was practically dozing when they reached the road. After the tricky descent to the gravel pavement the horses' pace evened and they climbed down the mountain at a steady walk.

"Samara…" Starsky said again, his words slurred a little with his cheek pressed against the saddle.

"Yes, oh noisy spirit."

"What are you going to do about those guys?"

"Unfortunately I can't do anything. The only thing I could claim to recognize about them was their bright orange hunting hats."

"Don't you have to issue permits to hunters?"

"The locals get licenses. They hunt year round on the mountain in permitted areas."

"Was that area permitted?"

"Unfortunately."

Starsky was quiet, wishing he could sit up, his back starting to cramp. "How many local guys does the prison hire?"

Samara thought for a moment then smirked. "You are pretty smart for a dead cop."

"Ah gee...thanks." Starsky muttered.

The guttural, mechanical growl almost brought Starsky back to a sitting position. "There's a car coming."

"Yes." Samara said.

"A red Torino?"

"With white war paint."

Starsky grinned but stayed 'dead'. "You should stick out your thumb. Ask for a ride."

The Torino was moving at a slow pace, the same slow pace that Hutch had been maintaining since first light, despite the ache the clutch was creating in his side. They didn't know where on the mountain Starsky was, but the hope was they'd see something. A sign of the car he'd rented, a hint of the food he'd bought, the rifle, the spray paint he must have been blazing trails with.

The last thing Hutch, or Captain Dobey, expected to see were two horses hugging the side of the road. One with a Native American sheriff, and the other with a very familiar body, limp against the horse's neck.

Hutch watched the sheriff lift a hand to flag them down, rolled down his window and acknowledged the gesture then pushed the car up the mountain fast.

Without a word Dobey grabbed the bubble, opened his own window, and slapped it onto the roof, hanging on until Hutch found a driveway to turn into, and got the car heading the other way.

By the time they got back to the sheriff both horses were without riders. Hutch parked the car as close to the road's edge as he could get it, yanked the parking brake and grabbed his cane. He climbed out of the driver's seat as fast as he could and hobbled toward the horses, his face tight, his chest hurting.

He caught sight of Starsky's legs, one bent slightly, bloodied at the knee and swollen. When he rounded the horse that was blocking his view he slipped a little on the gravel, caught himself, then met sky blue eyes, open.

Starsky looked like hell. A week and a half of beard was caked with dirt and blood, and his hair speckled with more dirt and leaves, had been hacked short. His hands and face were windburned and covered with scratches and bruises and his knee looked warped. But there was an upturn at the corner of his mouth.

The two men stared at each other, breathing hard, Hutch bent over a cane, Starsky sitting against the mountainside.

"Hey Ollie." Starsky said.

Hutch grinned, laughed, then gritted his teeth and half-heartedly kicked gravel at his partner. "I could kill you."

Starsky grinned wider, feeling any vestige of the panic attack on the mountain leaving his body with each breath. "You'll have to catch me first, old man."

Hutch's smile overtook his face for a moment.

"Besides," Starsky continued. "Technically I'm already dead."

"That should save us some time." Dobey snarked, joining the three other men on the side of the road. "Sheriff Samara, I'm Captain Dobey. This is Detective Sergeant Kenneth Hutchinson. And you know dummy here already."

Samara nodded to each man then quietly explained the plan he and Starsky had already begun to develop. While they talked Samara and Dobey got Starsky's 'body' into the back seat of the Torino and Hutch climbed into the driver's seat to fiddle with the radio. He put out a few fake calls that he knew wouldn't reach beyond the mountains, then waited for Dobey to return to the passenger seat.

Per the plan, Sheriff Samara headed down the mountain ahead of them, guiding Starsky's horse at a slow gallop. With the keys to the police station and the county morgue in hand, Hutch drove Dobey and his partner's "remains" down the mountain, passing Samara and cruising through the town of Tehachapi with the bubble spinning. The three-story police building, erected in a town with little space to spread, had it's own secured underground garage. Dobey unlocked the door, and lifted the gate before following the Torino into the echoing space.

He separated the morgue key from the ring and handed it to Hutch, waiting for him to turn off the motor before he said, "Two of you get into that morgue, and you stay there! I'm going to head up to the sheriff's office and start throwing up a smoke screen. Samara said the county coroner works down at the hospital. I'll see about getting him here."

Both men, still sitting in the Torino, said, "Yes Cap." in unison.

"And if either one of you gets into any trouble at all...you're going to be on suspension, fired and arrested, automatically."

Hutch winced, and Starsky's eyebrows went up, but both respectfully answered, "Yes Captain."

As he walked toward the elevator Dobey started to mumble, yanking at his tie and loosening his collar. He hit the call button and listened to the whine of the motors and let his tired head hang for a moment. His men wouldn't know that he was praying. Softly. A prayer of thanks.

Apart, the two detectives were loose cannons, bad bets.

Together...they always pulled through.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Hutch leveraged himself out of the driver's seat and straightened slowly, his hand pressing over his stitches. They had started to burn and he figured that had to do a lot with working the clutch for hours, the painkillers wearing off, maybe even the loss of the antibiotic he'd been on in the hospital. He lifted his shirt to find the bandages spotting lightly in the front and sighed.

"What'sa matter?"

"Bleedin' a little." Hutch said, casually, then bent to eye his partner. "Can you make it out of there on your own?"

"Yeah." Starsky said, gritting his teeth and edging his way out of the backseat. He managed it by turning his right leg toward the seat back and getting his left leg out, foot planted, then pulling upright. A thought entered his mind and he dismissed it immediately. Then he thought again, grinned to himself and then frowned disapprovingly at his partner.

"You know, you shoulda brought the Galaxie. Smarter car for mountainous terrain."

"Excuse me." Hutch narrowed his eyes to thin slits, his left arm on the top of the car, his stance vaguely intimidating.

The turn-around joke Starsky had planned flew out of his mind and he swallowed, choked on a nervous laugh and stuttered, "But it's nice to see the old-"

"Starsk." Hutch interrupted, his left hand going behind Starsky's right shoulder then to the back of his neck where Hutch got a good grip and squeezed.

"Yeah, partner." Starsky said carefully, feeling the muscles in his shoulder and neck start to tighten. The wary smile on his face disappeared slowly and was replaced with the same innocent look that baby dolls had painted on their plastic skulls.

"I've had...two weeks to recover from a," Hutch's nose wrinkled in disgust as he shook his head, "Nasty, life-threatening gunshot wound."

"Yeah, you're doin' great, partner. You look real-" Starsky was cut off by a poignant squeeze and he squirmed, then went still.

"I could be safe in my hospital bed, sleeping off pain pills, getting my breakfast served to me by beautiful nurses, and lazing my way through three, count 'em, three weeks of paid recovery time."

Starsky nodded this time, becoming aware of the ache in his knee again, Hutch's grip on his neck forcing him to put his weight on his right side. He started to open his mouth, then felt Hutch's fingers tighten and closed it again.

"And instead of staying in that nice, warm, comfy bed, with those lovely, sweet smelling nurses. I'm in a parking garage, a hundred miles away, with my partner, Nanuk of the East."

Starsky flashed a smile at the last bit, that waned quickly.

"Now, Starsky, can you guess how I'm feeling right now?"

"A little perturbed?" Starsky asked, reaching back to peel a few of the fingers away from his neck. Hutch finally let him go and looked at his fingertips with disgust for a moment. Starsky tried again, "Angry, maybe?"

"Try furious." Hutch snapped, then turned from the car and limped toward the wide door marked "Morgue".

"Well-" Starsky sighed and reached into the car for his bag before shutting the door and hopping to the wall. He used the cold concrete for support, barely putting weight on his leg as he followed his partner.

By the time he got to the open door, Hutch had already entered the morgue and turned on the lights. One wall was occupied by a floor-to-ceiling refrigerating unit with 9 cadaver drawers. None of them bore labels, but Hutch went through them anyway, mumbling something about stuffing Starsky into one of them to make sure his cover wasn't blown.

Starsky closed the door to the room and watched his partner, his own anger building until he shouted, "Hey look, pal. It's a two-sided street. The only difference is I didn't have a convenient partner to be angry at. I didn't have a suspect I could take it out on. I had nothin', Hutch!"

"Yeah, that's what you left me with."

"I left the car…" Starsky tried, then flinched and managed to catch the Torino's keys as Hutch pitched them.

"I don't want your car. I don't want your watch, your damn clothes, your house, your plants or anything else of yours. I want-" Hutch stopped, leaned on his cane with one hand and covered his aching side with the other.

Starsky looked at the keys in his hands, knowing where Hutch was going. Knowing why he stopped. It wasn't anything they hadn't covered in one way or another over the years.

"I don't like hospitals, Hutch."

"Yeah, neither do I." Hutch said, stubbornly.

"I was going crazy in that hospital, talking to myself. Then I was up on that mountain, and I could hear you in my head." Starsky waited until Hutch looked at him then said, "You wanna know what you had to say?"

Hutch took a breath then reached for one of the two chairs in the room. He dragged it by the back toward a single round table in the corner, joining a second chair already pushed in. He sat, arranged the cane so that he could get to it easily and put his full attention on his partner.

"You started out telling me I was stupid." Starsky said, quietly pleased at the smirk Hutch gave him. "That I was way over my head. Out of my mind crazy for being up there all alone." Starsky limped carefully across the expanse of floor separating them as he spoke. "You criticized my house cleaning, my repair work, you groused about my cooking. But you were real proud of the grid I made."

"Ah." Hutch said, his only comment. His hand had moved over his mouth and was hiding muscle twitches in his lips that might have been a smirk.

"You didn't like that I stayed out after dark the first night, but you liked the blazes on the trees."

"Mmhmm."

"You complimented the fires I made."

"I did?"

"Oh yeah. And when I found the body and took all the pitchers, and protected the body with the sticks-"

"Starksy, sticks?"

"Yeah. I built a fence."

"Right, a fence. Out of...sticks."

"Yeah."

Hutch cleared his throat and said, "Go on."

"Well...I found the body and I went back down to Tehachapi and I called Dobey-"

"You didn't cover it.."

"What?"

"With a tarp or something?"

Starsky finally made it to the other chair and pulled it away from the table, carefully sinking into. "I didn't have a tarp."

"Course not. I mean...you're driving into the wilderness to look for bodies that have been there, presumably 4 months or longer...who would think to bring a tarp?"

Starsky's brow furrowed and he stared at the ground, backtracking through the conversation, trying to remember if he'd had a point that would've in any way, worked in his favor.

"So you...called Captain Dobey." Hutch prompted, then moved his chair forward until he could get a good look at his partner's knee without hurting himself in the process.

"Yeah...and we talked about how he wasn't going to suspend me just yet so long as I showed up by 8pm-"

"Which you didn't."

"Well...I was up the mountain running away from guys with gasoline and guns."

"You what?"

"I think they're Ackabee's guys. They...burned up the rental and the cabin, and I took off down the mountain. Then I stepped into that tree-fall and my knee went out and...I had to put it back in, and then I slept under a log…" Starsky paused a moment, then said, "Twice...and then I met the sheriff."

Suddenly Starsky was tired. When he finally looked up at Hutch again he was surprised by the stunned, silent look on his face.

The fight that had been building in Hutch had begun to fade the deeper into the story Starsky got. What Starsky hadn't seen, and would likely never see, was the vacant deadness in his eyes when he got to the last part. The part where he was tearing through the woods, afraid, fighting for his life. Putting himself through agony, just so that he could escape.

Hutch let the air settle between them a moment then said, "You'd think, being that we've been cops for so long, we'd be less touchy about this sort of thing."

Starsky leaned back in his chair, letting his leg stretch out, and crossed aching arms over his chest. "You mean the part about guys trying to kill us? Or the part about nearly losing one or both of us and then going around picking fights?"

Hutch thought for a moment, his lower lip jutting out before he said, "Yes."

"I'm sorry, partner." Starsky said, his eyes heavy lidded, but attentive.

"Yeah?" Hutch asked, leaning forward, then he said, "C'mere." He stood and pulled his partner up and against his chest.

The missing, broken pieces that had needed mending fell back into place. Their friendship, partnership, and brotherhood snapping back into something like working order.

"Glad you're ok." Starsky said, his cheek resting against Hutch's shoulder.

"I think we'll both make it." Hutch muttered, then slipped his left hand under his partner's arm, grabbed his cane with the other hand and guided him to the metal slab in the middle of the room.

Starsky looked at it for a moment, then eyed his partner. "I'm not gonna get on that."

"Yeah, you are." Hutch said.

"It's cold."

"Okay." Hutch said, then made sure his partner was stable on his feet and walked over to the light switches on the wall, flipping on the one labeled "Exam 1". A bright, six-inch in diameter spot light flickered on, bathing the table. "There you go. Sun lamp. Hop up."

Starsky's upper lip was still raised in disgust. "It's hard. I been sleepin' on the ground, Hutch."

"Okay." Hutch said again then grabbed his partner's bag and hefted it onto the table.

Starsky watched Hutch closely when he froze for a moment, his eyes widening, casting a sideways glance toward his wounds. "You ok?"

Hutch waited a moment before he straightened and said, "Think so."

He started rooting through the mud covered bag, only pausing to slap Starsky's hand when he tried to get a look at the bandages, yanked a leaf covered blanket from the bag and haphazardly spread it out on the table. He knocked the cans of food, shells, spray cans of paint and matches onto the floor, snagged the folded and abused map, then patted the surface of the table.

"Soft, warm. Get up there."

Starsky pressed his lips together and pondered the effort his partner had gone through, then turned and lifted himself onto the table backwards, easing his right leg up, and closing his eyes tightly against the obnoxiously bright light.

"Comfy?"

"Could use a pillow."

"Ah." Hutch said, and bent to retrieve the empty bag, bundling it into a ball and settling it behind Starsky's head. "There. Good?"

Starsky thought about it, still feeling like there was another shoe preparing to drop. "Yeah. You?"

"Oh...fine, Starsk. Fine."

The only other seat in the room was a stool, designed specifically to be at the right height for the autopsy table. Hutch grabbed it, pulled it close to Starsky's right side, slid on the seat and opened the map. He snorted, and bent the edge down long enough to tell his partner, "That is a nice grid."

"Thank you." Starsky said, satisfied.

"Where'd you find the body?"

"B-13, Red Sector." He said, grinning.

Hutch studied the map, his mind finally settling into the case. "That's miles from the prison."

"24 or so."

"Twenty-four…" Hutch whispered thoughtfully. "So he escapes from the prison, whether he's a guard or a prisoner, and covers 24 miles...no...more. I mean he probably wandered a bit. So…" Hutch studied the map a moment then said. "We'll say 15 miles a day the first day, if he wasn't wounded. Less the next day without food or water."

"Wait a minute. This was four months ago, dead of winter." Starsky said, propping himself up on his elbows. "I saw the kind of white stuff a snow storm could dump up there. Even fresh as a daisy he couldn't have made 15 miles uphill."

"Ten miles?"

"More like eight."

"Okay...eight miles a day, less the next day, and after three days he'd have been dehydrated, hungry, maybe delirious."

"That's probably why he stepped into that wolf trap."

"What?" Hutch asked.

"Wolf traps. All the cabins up there used to be rented out by wolf trappers."

"So...maybe they didn't kill him."

"No." Starsky said, somehow disappointed.

"But they tried to kill you."

"Right. And you." Starsky said.

"Right."

"How did they know to stop looking for him?"

"Who?"

"The body? The guard, or the prisoner or whoever he was." Hutch said.

"Maybe they found the body." Starsky said.

"They wouldn't have left it there. They're so fond of fires they would have burned it or buried it or…" Hutch trailed off. "Something didn't happen, that they expected to happen."

"They were all on edge at that prison, like waiting for the prison board to swoop in and shut everything down."

"And when four months passed and no feathers were ruffled…"

"They figured, "He's gone, maybe our troubles are over."" Starsky said.

"Was he actually in a guard's uniform?"

"Yeah." Starsky "But...so was I for a day and a half."

"Nobody's reported any missing undercover cops."

"Hutch...cops aren't the only ones who go undercover."

Hutch stared at him, his eyes widening. "Think you can walk?"

"Can I use your cane?"

"Uh...no."

Starsky sighed and slid back off the table. "I'll make do."


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

A brief search turned up a crutch-like cane with a cuff that they were able to adjust to Starsky's height. It had a tag on it labeling it as part of the personal effects of W. Cook, but the date on the tag was a decade old.

As they hobbled out into the parking garage Starsky scanned the small lot surprised not to see another car. "I know he had to drop off the horses but, Samara should'a been here by now."

"Well, horses don't move as fast as the tomato." Hutch said passing the car in question and heading for the elevator.

"You know, Samara called the white blaze "war paint"."

"I think he was feeling sorry for you."

Starsky glared softly then took a moment to look over his car, trying not to think about the crispy Station-wagon that he was still going to have to account for.

"Did you say they set the Station-wagon on fire?" Hutch asked, ruining his attempts.

The elevator door opened and Hutch followed his partner in before he pressed what he logically reasoned was the correct button.

"You know it didn't cost that much to rent, it can't be that hard to pay off." Starsky said, quietly hopeful.

"Aren't those classics?"

"A '68 Station-wagon!?"

Hutch shrugged, and after a moment of silence Starsky as much as heard the other shoe dropping.

He gave a sarcastic, nasally laugh before the doors opened. Dobey was on the other side, looking none too happy.

"Hey, Captain." Starsky said brightly. "Going down?"

"I was. What are you two doing up here?"

"We had an idea." Hutch said.

Dobey took a long look at the crutch one of his detectives was leaning on then rolled his eyes. "Come on. There's coffee made."

The three men gathered around the coffee machine mixing caffeine, creamer and sugar together before Dobey pulled out two chairs and pointed at them emphatically. Both of his detectives sat down with their coffees, looking petulant, but cooperative.

"Alright, now Sheriff Samara's hunting permit records show a match up for five male individuals listed in the last census as working for corrections." Dobey said. He lifted the single file folder in his hands for them to see. "This is the only one that doesn't work in this station. As soon as Samara gets back I can ask him to verify, but there isn't much on him."

Hutch reached for the file and glanced through it with Starsky looking over his shoulder. "There's nothing on him."

"Up here the rule is 'leave well enough alone'. Always tends to be that way in towns like this." Dobey said, thinking of one town in particular that his detectives made equally as big a splash in.

Starsky looked at the dossier trying to match the name with a face, or the description with a body type of any of the guards.

"The description doesn't fit anybody." Starsky said.

Hutch continued to stare at the mostly blank lines. "This man is a local. To get the hunting license he'd have to have been a resident for what...a year, at least? And if he's running around the hills up there doing Ackabee's dirty work, he knows the mountains, better than would take a year. If he's been here long enough, maybe he has family. I mean..it's a small town. Where's the phone book?"

Dobey produced a thin volume and Starsky looked up the name. All ten pages of them.

"Seems the name BeeKay is the 'Smith' of Tehachapi."

"Oh." Hutch said.

"This guy being from an old family fits with your theory, though." Dobey said. "If the way Ackabee is running that prison is of benefit to a founding family, they're going to work hand-in-hand without a lot of dissension."

"Dissension?" Starsky asked.

"Arguing." Hutch translated.

"Oh. Captain...Samara told me that when you called yesterday he told you about a local reporter…"

"Yeah, the guy that wrote the story. Samara also said he disappeared soon after."

"Do we got a name for this guy?"

"Um…" Dobey turned glancing at the scatter of papers on the sheriff's desk, before starting to dig through them.

Hutch slowly got to his feet and hobbled to a row of filing cabinets, found them locked then glanced through the glass double doors that separated the police station from the lobby. "Shame we don't have the key to the library. They'd have copies of the local paper in there."

"Samara said all the keys to the building were on this ring." Dobey said, then tossed the keys to Hutch.

"Well. Be right back." Hutch said, pushing through the doors while he thumbed through the keys.

"You two work everything out down there?"

"Huh?" Starsky blinked, either lost in thought or falling asleep. "Oh...he's probably gonna hold a grudge for a while but...I'm used to that." Starsky slipped a little lower on the chair until the back of his head could rest on the chairback and closed his eyes.

"You look terrible, Starsky."

Starsky gave Dobey a thumbs up, crossed his arms over his chest and let himself doze.

The library key was the only skeleton key on the ring. Hutch opened the doors and reached in for a light switch before he limped into the room. Eye-level, maple-wood shelves filled most of the middle space of the long open room, with shelves lining the north and south walls. The western wall sported a giant mural that was supposed to depict the history of the town from the earliest settlements to the latest developments. Hutch noticed that the native American population was briefly represented by the face of a single male warrior, before the residents began to be more white.

Strangely enough the face was the spitting image of Sheriff Samara. "Probably asked him to pose for it." Hutch muttered then waded into the room until he found the newspapers.

The prison break story, of course, was on the front page of the The Tehachapi News, complete with a photo of the prison taken from a distance and height sufficient enough to include the entire facility in one frame. The writer's name was Sam Aralto.

Hutch set the first paper to the side then began searching the paper from the previous day, then the day before that, glancing over any of the articles that Aralto had written. The deeper he dug the more he recognized the reporter's major flaw.

He collected a handful of papers and headed back to the police office, expecting to find Samara there. Instead he found his partner asleep in his chair, his leg laying across the chair Hutch had been sitting on, and Dobey standing at the filing cabinets, reading through arrest records.

"Where's Samara?" Hutch asked.

"I don't know. I found the dispatch desk around the corner, tried calling his car radio but I got no response. What do you have?"

"The reporter's name is Aralto. This guy's got delusions of grandeur. I mean...he disguises himself as a rodeo clown to investigate charges of concessions theft at the local spring roundup. Here in another article he talks about volunteering at the local hospital to report on charges that patients of certain races were receiving better treatment. Either this guy is paranoid or there is a lot more wrong with this town than anyone's told us yet."

"Even if he is paranoid, it paid off at that prison."

"I'm still trying to find where this guy started his career, maybe get a photograph of him or a description."

"If you're up to it, keep at it."

"Is he alright?" Hutch asked, pointing toward his partner.

"Yeah. I tried to talk him into moving over to the couch there in the corner but, he says he's comfortable."

"Hm." Hutch said, then shook his head. "Call me if you need me."

Dobey nodded, made sure his man made it out the door okay then went back to his files.

"Aralto, Aralto...here were are, Mr. Sam Aralto. Trespassing, trespassing, impersonating a police officer. Trespassing, harassment. You got him pegged right, Hutch." Dobey mumbled, then took the thick file from the cabinet, gave his sleeping detective one last glance, then followed after the other one.

Starsky heard the door open and close, felt the air in the room shift and settled deeper into the dream state. It was a lovely place that smelled of coffee and familiar cologne and gun grease and dusty files. It was a smell he walked into without noticing, almost every day. Funny what 9 days in the wilderness could do.

He was drifting through different layers of sleep. One deeper than the next when the door opened again, bringing with it a burst of cooler air, a waft of sweat and unwashed human, and stale fruit.

One, two, three people were suddenly in the room, breathing hard like they'd been running.

"I don't believe it." One of them said, then quietly barked, "You said he was dead!"

"I thought he was dead! How the hell was I supposed to know? He fell over. The sheriff checked him."

Starsky was fully awake but he pretended sleep, opening the eye that the three men couldn't see.

"Yeah well...Ackabee says he's expendable. Get rid of the body."

"If he ain't dead yet, why do we got to do anything?"

His knife. It had been strapped to his left ankle for so long he'd forgotten it was there. If he could reach it, get it in his hand before any of those jokers got close to him...all he had to do was make some noise and Dobey and Hutch would come in from the other side and have them surrounded.

"Cause if he's still alive, he can talk. Watch the door."

Starsky heard footsteps then felt a beefy hand slap down over his mouth and made his move. The knife was in his hand, then driven into the guy's forearm before the detective even opened the other eye. When he did he realized the mistake he'd made.

Ackabee had warned him not to poke a bear.

"H-Hadrian."

"Hi, Skeeter." The giant man said, then plucked the knife from his arm like it had been a toothpick and grabbed Starsky by the front of his shirt, dragging him to his feet. Hadrian didn't seem that mad, but as Starsky watched the muscles in his face move, like worms under the skin, he realized it was reasonable to assume that Hadrian always looked that way.

"Look...look, I'm sorry about the knife I just-Noooo-Ugh!"

Hadrian went from 0 to 60 in two seconds, driving his fist and the man hanging from it into the wall. Starsky tried to keep his head forward but his shoulders and back took the brunt. A second impact from the fist that had brought him there drove the air from his lungs and he was gasping for breath.

"Hadrian...you remember….you remember the blonde guy. The guy that...asked you for that letter...while you were making license plates?"

Hadrian snorted then nodded.

"Well, you know, he made fun of you." Starsky said, then winced as Hadrian took his surprise out on the wrong target. Namely, himself. "He did...h-he mocked you for not knowing your letters and...and he's down in the morgue right now."

Hadrian's head turned and Starsky tried to reach something, anything that he could use to knock him out. He wasn't paying attention to the silent communication going on between Hadrian and the men he'd come in with until one of them spoke.

"Nobody's down in the morgue, hotshot. Why do you think we came up here?"

"Put him down, Hadrian. We'll find another wolf trap on the mountain and stick him in it."

Starsky's feet hit the floor a minute later and Hadrian backed off a few inches. One of the other two stepped in and it took Starsky a minute to recognize him. He couldn't remember the name, but his file was probably right. BeeKay...the man he and Hutch had tied-up in the guard tower the night they escaped. He was the local connection. He was the garbage man. The one disposing of Ackabee's messes.

Starsky collected as much air into his lungs as he could before he screamed, "Hutch!" Long and loud. Then he fought. He yanked himself free of BeeKay and swung a chair toward Hadrian before he had to put pressure on his bad leg.

It hurt, but death would hurt worse. Especially by means of wolf trap.

Working his way around Samara's desk Starsky threw anything he could get his hands on. Both BeeKay and his second cronie seemed content to let Hadrian take the brunt of the assault, and the bear, the big dummy, kept after Starsky.

The detective started to aim for the one part of Hadrian that he knew would hurt, determining to himself that he was going to practice throwing until his arm fell off if he survived.

He'd backed himself into a corner before he realized it, his eyes bouncing between the two giant fists, ready to duck under either, or both.

All of the men in the room were distracted by the sudden screaming of two men pushing library carts full of Encyclopedia Britannica's into the room. One, driven by Hutch, creamed BeeKay against the wall. The other cut the second cronie off at the knees, running him down. On his way to the floor the cronie cracked his head on the corner of Samara's desk and fell like a stone.

Hadrian tried the one handed lift again.

"Hghh Hadrian...I...I only got one move left up here...and you're not gonna like it." Starsky managed, wrapping both his arms around Hadrian's one to take the pressure of his neck.

Not surprisingly Hadrian didn't let him down, and Starsky swung his left foot back and kicked it hard into the place where the sun never shone.

Hadrian reacted, first by dropping Starsky, who landed badly and yelped in pain, and second by falling, like a cut sequoia, to the floor of the police station.

From where he stood, bent over double, with his hand clamped over his wound, Hutch swore he saw the coffee in the pot ripple when the big man went down.

"St-Starsky?"

Starsky groaned then managed a, "What?"

"What...letter did you ask him for?"

Starsky clamped both his hands around his leg, just above the knee, afraid to look at it. "My...letter…" He said, panting. "Of resignation."

From over by the coffee pot Dobey and Starsky heard breathless laughter followed by a soft groan and, "Oh no."

Dobey glanced up to see his detective staring at a bloodied palm, and blood soaking through his shirt. Hutch sank to the floor where he was and let his eyes roll closed.

"You two…" Dobey breathed. "I swear.." He straightened, checked on the man he'd run over to make sure he was still breathing, then turned in time to see Sheriff Samara enter the room, take three steps then stand stock still. Minutes later a beautiful, raven haired woman of the same height, looking a few years younger, entered the room and gasped, covering her mouth with her hands.

"What did I tell you, Luyu? White man comes with good intentions. Leaves destruction in his wake."


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Starsky managed to sit up and slapped his hand down on the seat of a chair near him, then dragged himself up into the seat, his face bright red under the sun burn and the stubble.

"You ok, Starsky?" Dobey asked, going to Hutch and bending to help the man to his feet.

Starsky seemed dazed but he nodded, scanning the wreckage of the room. Hadrian was still moving around, moaning, but not as bad off as his two buddies.

Using the chair for a crutch Starsky pushed up onto his good leg, and dragged the chair with him while he patted Hadrian down. Every touch of Starsky's hands made the big guy flinch, yet Starsky was aware that all it would take was one swing of the hulk's fist and the detective would go down. Funny thing about perspective, he thought.

"Either one of those other two turkeys awake?" Starsky asked, straightening and leaning hard on the back of the chair.

Across the room Luyu had gone to help Captain Dobey, getting Hutch to his feet and over to the couch in the corner. Without being asked she knelt by his side and pulled his shirt up, looking under the bandages.

"Ahiga, go down to the morgue and bring me the red fishing box. And clean sheets." She said quietly.

Hutch's brow creased as he watched Sheriff Samara head for the door, then stared at Luyu confused. "Goin' fishing?"

Luyu flashed her eyes up to Hutch's briefly then said, "It's a kit I keep. For those of my patients that come to me still breathing."

"Oh...so...you're a doctor, then."

"The county coroner. I moonlight at the hospital." She said, her voice distracted.

"Are you related to him?" Hutch asked, pointing at the door through which Samara had just disappeared.

"He's my brother." Luyu said, nodding.

"You're much prettier than he is." Hutch observed, earning a brief smile.

"This one's still with us." Dobey called, pulling Hutch's library cart out of the way and bending to check the pulse of the man Hutch had dented the wall with.

Starsky used his chair to get to the third man, went to bend down to check his pulse and was hit by a wave of dizziness and nausea. His eyes widened, sweat broke over his face and he settled back into the seat of the chair, working on keeping the coffee down.

"Yeah, he'll have a headache, but he's fine." Dobey continued, before he looked up. "Starsky?"

"Yeah, Cap." Starsk said, his face carefully controlled.

"Think you can move?"

"No, Cap." Starsky said, clinging to his chair like it was a life preserver.

"Miss, what was your name again?"

Before Luyu could respond, Samara walked back in with a pile of white hospital sheets and a red tin tackle box under his arm, and went straight to where his sister was getting to her feet.

"Get some gauze pads, stop the bleeding, then I'll need to re-stitch." She said, her voice low and controlled. Luyu crossed the room with purposeful strides, barely glancing at the two prisoners she passed before she took Starsky's head in her hands and tilted it gently toward the brightest light in the room.

Dobey backtracked out of her way, stepping around the sheriff's desk and jerking open drawers.

From where he knelt, Samara called, "What do you need, Captain?"

"Handcuffs."

"Top left hand drawer." Samara said, then pressed down against Hutch's bleeding torso with a patch of gauze.

Hutch's hand flew up and latched onto Samara's forearm. He couldn't control the squirm but managed not to fly off the couch. "I want the other nurse."

"Sorry, blondie," Samara said, adding a new layer of gauze as the last soaked through, "...you're stuck with me."

Luyu ran her fingers through Starsky's hair, finding several bumps that she didn't like. She turned his head gently to look at the cut on his cheek, then pressed the backs of her fingers against his forehead.

She watched Dobey bend over BeeKay, pulling the man's hands behind his back, and cuffing them together, then felt something else and cleared her throat softly.

Dobey glanced up at her, then stepped past BeeKay and a pile of tumbled Encyclopedias, going to one knee by the other goon. Luyu cleared her throat again, and Dobey looked up, then looked to his detective. Starsky was leaning, forehead-first, against her stomach, practically falling from the chair, his hands dangling by his sides.

"Oh no...Starsky, come on." Dobey quickly cuffed one of the goon's hands and dragged it toward the foot of Samara's desk, closing the other cuff around the sturdy wood.

Then he pushed to his feet once more.

"Can you lift his shoulders, I'll get his feet." Luyu said, already wrapping her hands around Starsky's ankles.

"His right knee is-"

"His knee is infected. He's feverish." Luyu said.

Together the two carried Starsky to the other end of the couch, with only mild protest coming from the wounded man.

Luyu whispered a thank you as she dug through the tin, grabbing supplies.

Dobey straightened, grimacing at a pull in his back. "Samara...let me take over here. BeeKay and that other one are taken care of. I don't know what we're going to do about the big guy."

Samara shifted until Dobey had his hands over the pile of gauze, then carefully stepped back from the couch. He swiped at his pants to get the blood off his fingers then started arranging quarters for his new prisoners.

"How bad is it?" Hutch asked, then reached out and caught Luyu's elbow when she didn't respond, asking again, "How bad?"

"Not too bad." She said, her eyes meeting Hutch's long enough for him to believe her. "But bad enough that his body is fighting a little harder than usual."

"What do you need?" Hutch asked. His voice sounded strong, even to him, but his head came to rest against the couch cushions, too heavy to hold up anymore.

"Cold water, so that we can cool him down. It'd be better if I could get him into a bath or a shower." Luyu lifted the shirt Starsky was wearing, only to find another one underneath, and long underwear on underneath that. "He's got so many layers on, I can't find skin."

She turned toward Starsky's knee, shifting his leg a little to get the cut into better light. The moment she touched the swelling Starsky jerked, and his eyes flew open, instantly more alert.

"Captain Dobey…" Samara called from the other side of the room.

Dobey glanced up, then toward Hutch who nodded, his own hand replacing the captain's.

Dobey stood and joined the Sheriff, guiding BeeKay to his feet as he began to come around. Together they guided him through a door at the back of the large office, into a long concrete hall bordered by cells. "Last one on the left." Samara said, walking away when Dobey said, "Okay, I got it."

When Samara returned to the room he patted his pockets, then searched the top of his desk before Hutch quietly said, "Sheriff, in the library."

Samara headed out into the lobby, as Luyu sighed. "There shouldn't be this much swelling. Not for a cut that size."

Starsky swallowed against the random flashes of heat and pain that were shooting up his leg every time Luyu poked him and said, "I dislocated it."

Luyu pulled her hands away quickly, muttering rapid apologies, then stood, grabbed one of the bed sheets and went to her brother's desk, routing around for scissors. Quickly she made a cut, four inches from the top hem and tore along the length of the sheet, cutting the bottom hem with the scissors. She folded the strip in half, then laid it on the desk, and spun in a circle until she spotted the empty coffee carafe sitting on the top hotplate of the machine. She grabbed the empty pot, then reached for the grounds basket, yanking it free of the machine and dumping the grounds carefully onto the middle section of the strip of cloth. She folded it together into a pouch and walked over to the two men, handing the pouch to Hutch.

"Here. On his knee, just above the swelling." She said, then took the empty pot into the hall.

Starsky and Hutch stared at the coffee filled pouch, before Hutch sniffed it, shrugged, then flicked his fingers at his partner, "Come on. Up here, big guy."

Starsky's lip curled but he lifted his wounded leg, setting the heel of his hiking boot on his partner's thigh. "It's coffee grounds." He said.

Hutch nodded and carefully settled the still warm pouch against Starsky's leg. The pouch molded itself to the skin slowly. "Smells good. Better than you do."

"So she thinks I smell bad?"

"Just too nice of a lady to say it out loud, Starsk." Hutch said.

Luyu returned, her brother not far behind her. While Samara went to his desk, keys in hand, to unlock the prisoner still unconscious on the floor, Luyu dumped the now full pot of water into the machine and set it to percolate.

As she knelt by the couch, searching again through the fishing tin, Starsky pointed at the pouch and said, "He put coffee on my leg."

"It's a poultice. It will help with the pain."

"So will aspirins."

"Not as quickly." She said, smiling, before she pulled a glass bottle of crystals and a box of baking soda out of the bottom of the tin. She went back to the desk and ripped away another strip, watching the pot.

Samara gave his sister a wink as he got the second prisoner to his feet, walking him toward the cells.

Luyu smiled quietly in return, pouring some of the crystals and some of the baking soda into a coffee cup.

"You're not gonna make me-Hey, she's not gonna make me drink that is she?" Starsky wanted to know, craning his neck to see what Luyu was doing with the mug.

"Yeah, definitely Starsk, that's the drinking kind of poultice."

"Wha?"

Luyu started giggling despite herself. She worked at crushing the crystals in the cup with a spoon, then used the hot water to make a paste. This she spread in layers between folds of the second cloth strip.

"She's makin' another poltergeist, ya dummy." Starsky said after a minute, not succeeding at hiding the obvious relief that he wasn't going to be gagging on baking soda and…"Hey, what are the crystals?"

Carrying the poultice over to her two patients, Luyu laid it gently over the angry, red cut on Starsky's knee and said, "Epsom salts."

"Ep-Ah!" Starsky was cut off for a second and his leg started to vibrate as the salt and soda melted against the wound. It burned more than he thought it would. "...see you can't drink that stuff." Starsky finally managed, glaring at Hutch.

Hutch shrugged then looked down at the latest layer of gauze above his waist, then pulled his hand away completely and let his head rest against the back of the couch. He closed his eyes and breathed, the bleeding stopped.

Luyu shifted closer to Hutch and gently pulled the gauze back, layer by layer until she got to the wound. "Two stitches broken. And it should be cleaned. Whatever hospital released you should be closed down."

Hutch groaned, felt Starsky settle his other boot on his thigh and glanced over to see his partner looking exhausted, feverish but smug.

"Don't even start." He warned, lifting his hand and shaking a finger.

Luyu had retreated to the desk where she was mixing more of the salt in the mug with hot water. She cut wider strips, tore them, then cut them into squares, while the mix in the cup cooled a little. She knew her two patients were weak and exhausted, and half expected both to doze off. Yet as she worked she heard their voices struggling onward, barely audible.

"I'm not starting anything."

"Yeah, you're not finishing anything either."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know what it means." Hutch said, closing his eyes until he heard giggling and opened them again to see Luyu's shoulders shaking.

"See that? She's laughing at ya." Starsky said, triumphantly. "Not only is she smart, and beautiful, she's got good taste."

Luyu was having trouble hiding the smile when she carried the coffee mug and her pile of cloths back to the couch. "If you two are done having fun at my expense, this is the "not fun" part." She warned. "Hold that, please."

Hutch glanced down then caught the blood-stained bottom of his shirt and held the cloth free of the wound, turning a smug smile of his own toward Starsky. It backfired a second later when hot saline solution was squeezed over the wound. His back arched and Hutch's foot kicked out, sending the cup full of saline sailing across the room. Hutch's free right hand came down hard, and latched onto Starsky's right ankle nearly knocking away the two pouches precariously perched on his partner's knee.

Luyu kept the compress where it was, working at cleaning the wound quickly and efficiently, but out of the corner of her eye she caught the movement of the dark haired partner, lurching up and bending toward the blonde. She spared Starsky a glance, expecting to see pain on his face. Instead his face was directed towards her, eyebrows pushed together with concern. Starsky's hand had closed around Hutch's bicep, tight enough to cause discomfort. A distraction, she realized.

Luyu pulled the compress away and studied the wound, before gently replacing it. She stood, going to the coffee pot to pour fresh, hot water into a new cup, stunned.

They were blood-brothers. It had hit her like a train, flooding her soul with the strength of the relationship between to the two men, like nothing she'd felt in a long time.

The mountain had felt it, and told her brother while he was there, finding the curly-headed one. He had told her about it on their way back to the station, exuberantly describing a life force that he hadn't felt or seen since he was a child. A life force that their own father, and grandfather, both medicine men, said couldn't exist amongst a people so self-motivated as the whites.

As she grew older she had brushed away the racial bigotry, disguised as mysticism, and waded into the white world for her degree in a science that relied on fact, not religion. Yet the memory came rushing back, filling her with warmth.

By the time she was ready to repair the stitches Hutch had broken, the two men had resituated on the couch. Starsky had moved so that his right leg was crooked, his knee supported by a cushion, the leg tucked against the back of the couch. Hutch had found a way to lie down, his wounded left side facing away from the couchback, and his right leg at an angle. The calf of that leg pillowed Starsky's head.

Both men were dozing.

Luyu sighed softly, wishing she could let them sleep, but knowing it was best to get the hard parts out of the way.

Hutch's eyes opened a crack when she knelt by his side. He barely moved his lips as he mumbled, "That time again, huh?"

Luyu smiled softly and said, "I'm sorry. What are your names?"

Both men spoke at the same time, saying their names in the same order and pointing. She grinned then pointed to the left and said, "You're Starsky. And you're Hutch?"

"Right." They said in unison, then closed their eyes as if the introductions had exhausted them.

"Would you rather I finish this later?"

Hutch struggled to stay awake long enough to respond and amiably mumbled, "I don't care what you do. S'long as it doesn't hurt."

Working quietly, Luyu set the stitching tools to the side, covered the wound with a few layers of clean gauze, then a few layers of sheet and taped the dressing down. She found blankets and covered both men, then turned and was surprised to see her brother, and Captain Dobey sitting on either side of Samara's desk, watching her.

She joined them quietly, smiling to Captain Dobey when he retrieved a chair for her. Samara kept a suspicious look on his face until she met his eyes, and gave a reluctant nod. Samara smiled broadly, ignoring Dobey's ping-pong glance between the two.

"How are my men?" Dobey asked when the sibling sub-text seemed to die down.

"They both need to get cleaned up, clean clothes, real food, real beds. For now we can let them sleep."

"I'm not going to make it out of town for a day or so according to your brother here, and I get the feeling that if I leave these two unsupervised they're going to get themselves into some other mess. I hate to force hospitality from you, but.."

Both Luyu and Samara responded instantly, reassuring the captain that he and his men were welcome.

"Why are they stuck here?" Luyu asked Samara, presuming the reason to be related to the prisoners.

"It's snowing again." Ahiga told her, jerking his head toward the window. Luyu's eyes lit up with excitement the way he knew they would, and he shook his head.

"She likes the snow." He told Dobey. "Has a wall full of snow globes. I used to call her Chilali when we were kids."

"It means snowbird. And it wasn't very nice of him. It nearly stuck." Luyu said

"Both names sound beautiful." Dobey said, finding himself smiling despite how tired he felt. "If we're going to get them on their feet though, it should happen now."

"Why?"

"Those men you have in your jail back there came looking for Starsky. They knew right where to come, too. If my men are immobilized they shouldn't still be in the last place somebody tried to take a crack at 'em."


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

The snow fell quickly at first, covering the ground like it had two days before, with giant flakes that seemed to swallow the town. After about an hour, however, the flakes reduced in size, turning to flurries. With an hour's worth of rest, Starsky and Hutch were placed in the back of one of the county's two ambulances, and driven to the split level cabin that Luyu called home.

While Starsky took a shower, insisting he could handle it himself, Luyu settled Hutch on the king sized bed she kept in her guest bedroom. She gave him a local anesthetic and a shot of penicillin, then replaced the stitches that had pulled free. The anesthetic worked with Hutch's exhaustion, knocking her patient out again, and keeping him out. By the time he was rebandaged, sans his shoes and covered with a thick quilt her other patient arrived.

Dressed in a borrowed pair of sweatpants, his chest bare but for a myriad of bruises, Starsky stood in the doorway to the room, one hand against the wall for balance and the other with a cup of steaming liquid in it.

Luyu looked up surprised, then got to her feet and had a cup of coffee pushed towards her.

"Where did you get this?"

"Over there." Starsky muttered, pointing over his shoulder toward the kitchen. "I found it. Thought you might be thirsty. Or maybe Hutch is thirsty."

Luyu smiled, took the cup of coffee, then slid under the detective's shoulder, guiding him into the hall again and down to her own bedroom door. "Hutch is sleeping. But I'm sure he'll appreciate your thinking of him."

"No." Starsky mumbled. "Hutch's mad at me."

Luyu helped lower the man to the bed, unable to avoid looking at the damage the mountain had done. "Why would Hutch be mad at you?"

"Oh...cause...he wanted to stay with the beautiful nurses...and I made him come out to the mountain."

Luyu sighed and guided Starsky's shoulders back, arranging the pillows, then the blankets. "Well, Hutch says that I'm pretty, and I am like a nurse. I think he'll forgive you."

"You do?"

"Mmhmm."

"Oh good."

"If you need anything, just shout." Luyu said, standing and going to the door.

"Hey...don't forget your coffee."

Luyu went back to retrieve the cup of liquid then shut the door to her room. In the hall she paused halfway between the two doors and sat in a chair that she'd rarely had cause to use. It had been purely decorative up until that moment. She sat, pulled the cup of coffee to her lips and recognized the strength of the coffee that her brother was known for. She smiled, sipped, then leaned back and closed her eyes, listening to the snow fall.

*******************

Back at the prison Dobey settled in on the other side of Samara's desk and bit into the first food he'd had since the night before. Samara had joined him, and they sat looking over the files they had pulled for the three men in the jail.

"Hadrian Usher, Born 1940, Nebraska, town unknown. Father died when he was 8, mother died when he was 10. Began working with his uncle, his only living relation, who owned a construction company. Stopped going to school at age 14. Led a quiet enough life until he was arrested at age 17 for shoplifting. Enlisted in the Navy, served for 8 years on the USS Barry. Honorable discharge." Samara read, then bit into his sandwich, reading on quietly.

"Sounds like he shouldn't have turned into a bad egg." Dobey commented.

"Want to guess which it was that caused him to beat up a man in Singapore?"

"A woman. No question." Dobey said, and Samara nodded.

"As a civilian in Singapore, waiting for his ship home, Hadrian beat a man to death over a woman. 2nd degree murder. He was transported to three other prisons where he ended up in fights, then landed in CCI."

"And now in your jail." Dobey said, then picked up the second file in the stack.

"BeeKay, first name, Alonzo. Born 1938, life-long resident of Tehachapi. Started working at the prison...14 years ago." Dobey read. "Is there any way you can confirm that he was the one shooting at you this morning?"

"He was wearing the same clothes here in this office, as he was out on the mountain. That's as close as I'll come." Samara said, "But in this office we have him for trespassing, intent to do bodily harm and intent to hold an officer against his will. If we make it seem bad enough maybe we can trade jail time for the locations of the bodies."

"I don't like a trade. Not if it means gettin' a trigger man off scot free. Let's hold Mr. BeeKay for last."

"Ok. Criminal number three is Vinny "The Rat" Duncan. No priors in this county, but from upstate we have burglary, petty theft, grand theft, and a manslaughter charge."

"Were those his three strikes?"

Samara nodded, mouth full of food. "Current whereabouts in the California Correctional Institution of Tehachapi, CA."

"We can call that the annex.." Dobey said, throwing his thumb toward the door that led to the cells. "It'd be nice to get some inside dope on him. I have a CI at the prison...but I'm not anxious to draw extra attention to him if I can avoid it."

"You have a CI? In prison?"

"His name is Pedro Orlando. He did time at the age of 18 for involuntary manslaughter, killed his girlfriend while driving drunk. In the joint he got cleaned up, started working, sent money to the family of the girl. But when he was released on good behavior, he just couldn't hack the outside. Kept gettin' into trouble, went back on the bottle. My men, Starsky and Hutch, plucked him out of a sewer, cleaned him up, offered to pay him as a snitch...but Orlando had one condition."

"That they would arrest him, and put him back in?" Samara guessed, eyebrows nearly to his hairline.

"You got it. Orlando could play prison like Liberace plays piano. Prison was better for him than the outside world. He was grateful. It was Orlando that first tipped us off as to what was going on up here." Dobey said, then sank his teeth into his sub.

"I wonder if Sam Aralto knew Orlando.."

"The reporter?"

Samara nodded and picked up one of the newspapers that Hutch had left scattered across his desk.

"You thinking Aralto left something with Orlando?"

Samara thought for a moment, then asked. "How long ago did you get your information from the CI?"

"About two months ago. It took that long just to set up their cover."

"So, Aralto infiltrates the prison, discovers...something, then prisoners go missing and he prints his article and alerts the town. To cover, Ackabee has the warden report a prison break. But he indicates that he has everything under control. Then Sam Aralto disappears. Two months later your CI calls up his pals, Starsky and Hutchinson and tells them about a prison break that wasn't properly reported-"

"And the prisoners were never recovered." Dobey said. "Two months of red tape and we finally had Starsky hired as a guard and Hutch transferred in as a prisoner."

"And a day later…"

"A day later Starsky is knocked out cold, stuck in the same cell as his partner and they affect a pre-planned prison break." Dobey groused.

"Planned by who?"

"According to Starsky, Ackabee. Starsky was still in his uniform, still had his gun. Hutchinson pretended to take him prisoner and they left through one of the guard towers."

"BeeKay's tower." Samara said. "And a week and a half later BeeKay, Duncan, a prisoner, and Hadrian, also a prisoner, are free of the prison, burning cars and cabins on the mountain."

"And hunting down Starsky. Have prisoners ever been allowed supervised visits to the town?" Dobey asked.

"That isn't a work farm. Those men are to stay in the prison walls at all times other than for official transport to other facilities."

"It was mighty stupid of BeeKay, then, to drag those two into the police station." Dobey said.

"If the whole prison is corrupt, all BeeKay has to do is say that the prisoners had escaped into the town and he had come to retrieve them. The prison records will concur." Samara said.

"Except that you saw them on the mountain." Dobey said.

Samara thought for a moment. "I saw three men with guns. Prisoners shouldn't still be armed in the presence of the guard capturing them."

"And Starsky witnessed all three torching the Station-wagon." Dobey said, excitement in his voice.

"We need pictures of the Station-wagon, the photos your detective took, and records of his trip up the mountain. His rental agreement-"

"I have that." Dobey said through a mouthful of lettuce. He dug into his jacket pocket and produced a pile of receipts. "We followed Starsky from the bank to the mountain and got records of everything. Good solid police work."

"We have to get to that rental, before someone figures out that the clean up guys didn't do their jobs." Samara said, finishing his lunch.

"I thought you said the snow would keep us here in Tehachapi."

"I have horses." Samara said, smiling in what Dobey considered to be a dangerous manner.

"I...I don't ride." Dobey said.

"You can stay and watch the jail, then."

"Samara, don't you have a deputy?"

"Of course. He's on his honeymoon."

"Well, what about a dispatcher?"

"She's on her honeymoon, too."

"Wasn't it poor planning, having both of them out at the same time?"

"Couldn't be helped. They married each other." Samara said, then put his hat on his head and left the station and the jail in Dobey's capable hands.

***************************

Starsky had a thought.

The thought started small, in the back of his gradually falling asleep brain. Then it blossomed past his pleasantly numb body and came into being with a jolt, like lightning, that had him sitting straight up in bed.

Starsky threw the covers off and lurched to his feet, hopping on his good leg through the door, past a sleeping Luyu, and into Hutch's room. The door slammed against the wall and Starsky flipped on the lights, then limped toward the bed, fuming.

"St-starsky what...what's goin' on?"

"I was fighting the bad guys." Starsky began. "I screamed, "Huuuuuuuuutch!"

Hutch winced slightly, shading his eyes from the light and wishing he had hands enough to plug his ears.

"And...instead of rushing to my rescue, gun in hand, stopping the behemoth from ripping my head off my shoulders...you did what exactly?"

Hutch gave him a slightly guilty look then admitted, "Starsky I...I came here straight from that hospital. I didn't have my gun on me. Neither did Dobey."

Wide-eyed, Starsky stared at his partner, in whose hands he had placed his life and demanded, "What is with you guys? We are police. We were in a police station. There were guns everywhere!"

"Yeah but...they were all locked up, Starsk."

"You had the keys!" Starsky screamed, the veins popping out in his neck. "You had to tell Samara, the sheriff, where you left them. And where did you leave them? In the LIBRARY!"

Luyu appeared in the doorway, blinking groggily, confused. She tried to interrupt Starsky but he turned toward her, instantly involving her in his dilemma.

"It was his plan, wasn't it? The books on the cart. The Don Quixote-style demolition derby, it was Hutch's plan." Starsky accused, then turned to his partner, who was fiddling with the blanket, trying to think of a defense.

"You! And your damn! Plans! Going undercover in that prison was your plan." Starsky shouted, steaming.

Hutch groaned and rolled his eyes, carefully resituating on the bed until he could sit up.

"Listen, Starsky. I don't know why you were worried. I mean...just because you couldn't see us, or hear us. Just because...we weren't in the room didn't mean we wouldn't come through...eventually."

Starsky's teeth appeared in a feral snarl that Hutch recoiled from slightly.

"I think that's enough…"Luyu said quietly, and laid a gentle hand on Starsky's bare arm. There wasn't a spot of bare skin that didn't have a scratch or a bruise, and some of them were fresh enough to have come from the fight in the police station.

Between them the partners had been through hell, yet they were still taking pot shots at each other. Luyu had spent enough time among the male race, which tended to occupy the upper echelon of the medical field, to know that they worked out their problems in ways that were mind boggling to womankind. But she'd also had a big brother. And she knew the difference between a real argument and blowing off steam.

There was a lot of heat in the room but it would blow over.

"No, it's not enough. You stood in that morgue all high and mighty, like the man who never makes mistakes. I want you to admit it. Admit that you made a mistake."

"Starsky...what good is that gonna do?"

Starsky thought about it a minute then said, "It'll make me feel better."

"About what? You're own self-esteem? Come on..."

Starsky went quiet, looking between his partner and Luyu, before he limped back to the door.

"Starsky..."

Hutch watched his partner leave the room, Starsky's jaw so tight his teeth had to be hurting, and wished he wasn't as exhausted as he was. He waited, watching Luyu, who stood in the doorway watching Starsky. They both flinched when her bedroom door slammed shut.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Luyu laid her hand against the side of her face, not for the first time becoming aware that she had bitten off a great deal more than she could chew with those two. She leaned back far enough to meet Hutch's eyes and asked, "Are you alright?"

"Given the circumstances..." Hutch said, then shrugged with his whole body, and let himself go limp on the bed. He stared at the ceiling for a moment before he said, "He's hurting. He was hurting up on that mountain, and because I wasn't there...he imagined me."

Luyu blinked, surprised, then glanced down the hall to make sure the door to her room was still shut, and pulled the door to the guestroom most of the way closed. She went to the bed and settled beside Hutch, checking the bandages before she met the blonde man's eyes.

"He imagined you. What does that mean?"

"Things I would have said if I'd been there. The way I would have responded to the things he did. But he didn't tell me that he...thought these things up...he just said, 'You were there.'"

"He cares about you." Luyu said.

"Believe me...I know how he feels about me. I feel the same way about him. What bothers me-. I-I feel like I have to compete now with the Ghost of Ken Hutchinson on Tehachapi Mountain. Worse yet I'm...apparently a disappointment."

Luyu studied the detective for a moment, thinking. She watched his eyes bounce between hers, then his brow crease and a confused smile touch his lips under the mustache.

"What?" He asked.

"I think I know how to fix this. Can I tell you a story?"

Hutch's head quirked to the side and she saw some of her own feelings mirrored in his gaze, before he shifted deeper into the pillows and said, "Sure."

"Years ago...when I was first in college I…" Luyu looked to her fingertips, then said, "I was raped. The man who did it was a stranger to me. I had gone to a party, my first, and growing up in Tehachapi you don't know about what a San Francisco crowd in a walk-up can be like. What they have to offer..you know?"

Hutch's face had gone still, his mind clicking into cop mode whether he liked it or not. He was no longer in this woman's guest bedroom, but sitting at a crime scene, listening to a victim. He was also watching a beautiful, talented, intelligent woman, open her soul to an almost complete stranger, and sat in awed silence while she did it.

Luyu smiled a little then took a breath. "I was ashamed. I was afraid. I was hurting. But I couldn't tell anyone. I didn't tell anyone. Not my mother or father. Not my brother. I didn't tell any friends at school. I picked myself up, went to my dorm, took a shower...I went to a clinic a week later and had a doctor check me out and then I told myself that it happened...yes. But it wasn't going to affect me. And I could pretend that, because no one around me knew that it had happened. They were treating me like nothing in my life had changed, so I could immerse myself in that. Fake my way through."

Tears reached her eyes and fell, but they were brief. "You saw the bruises on your brother's chest?" She continued. "You saw his knee? You know he's in pain. You can feel it. But you weren't physically there to know every moment of his nightmare. The brother that was with him on that mountain, even if he was in Starsky's own mind, does know. You...the true brother. You have to catch up."

Hutch carefully laid his hands against her shoulders, brushing them down her arms until he held her hands in his. Luyu kept her head down for a moment, her eyes focused on their fingers, strands of black hair hiding her face.

"How did you get to be so smart?" He asked her in a whisper.

Luyu looked up and freed a hand so that she could swipe at the tears on her face. She brushed her hair back from her face and said, "Medical school. Lots of studying." Then she squeezed Hutch's hand and said, "Lots of living."

"Do they know now? Your friends, your family?" Hutch asked.

Luyu thought for a moment then pointed to a pot that sat on a decorative shelf near an east facing window. "A few weeks after I told my family, my mother brought me that. You see the mosaic? The many lines and colors, the gaps where the glue is? She threw the pot herself, molded it, fired it. Then she broke it, smashed it into tiny bits, and put it all together again, but with new materials replacing some of the old. Jade, glass, garnets, emeralds. When she brought it to me she put it in that window and she said, "Luyu, every morning the sun will shine in and a spectrum of color will bring this room to life in a beautiful way. This would not be possible...if I had left that pot whole. When you showed us your heartbreak, all we saw was more of your light shining through."" Luyu paused, and thought for a moment. "Did it hurt my mother that I had been hurt? Yes. But did I need her to tell me that? No. The one thing I could never "imagine" her saying was what she said. That was what I needed."

Hutch stared at the art piece in the window. Envisioning a mother creating a symbol of the life she had carried inside her, protected through childhood, then reluctantly set free into the world. He imagined that mother breaking the pot into shards, then piecing together something stronger and more beautiful than before.

Luyu stood quietly, pulling her hand free and Hutch watched her cross the room, turn out the light, then stand silhouetted in the doorway. She watched him for a moment, then he saw her head turn toward the eastern window before she shut the door.

*************************************

It was midnight before Samara returned, a wiry, young red-headed man following close behind him wearing a ball-cap that said Tehachapi Towing on the front. Samara's face was red from the cold, his jacket damp with melting snow, but he gave Dobey a satisfied smile.

"We have the car. It's in the garage."

"Beautiful." Dobey said, pounding his fist against Samara's desk.

"First thing in the morning, we get your detectives and we make the call." Samara said, perching on the corner of his desk.

"The beauty of being a big city cop, Samara, is that judges are used to gettin' calls at all hours of the night. I make the call tonight, I can have detectives, black and whites and the state prison board on the road by mornin'."

Samara smiled and picked up the handset on his desk, setting it before Captain Dobey with a flourish.

***************************

Something woke him, making him realize that he had dozed off. Hutch shifted in the bed, staring blindly around the darkened room before he noticed a familiar shadow. The shadow sat in a chair that hadn't been in the room before. The chair had been pulled close to the opposite side of the bed, so that the man in it could prop his feet up.

Hutch groaned softly at the ever present ache in his side and shifted in the bed by degrees until he could see the shadow without a crick in his neck.

"Hey."

"Hey." Starsky said back.

"What time is it?"

"Five-thirty, maybe."

"Luyu?"

"Sleeping, in her room."

Hutch stared at the ceiling, gradually making out the swoops in the plaster. "You ok?"

Starsky snorted softly, then was silent for a moment. "You know the walls in this house aren't too thick to begin with. But then they put registers in the walls to circulate the heat."

"Yeah?"

"I heard the two of you talking." Starsky said carefully.

Hutch was silent for a moment, revisiting his conversation with Luyu before he carefully said, "Oh."

Outside the window a gust of wind whined through the snow, the bare branches of the trees, then carried past the house.

"She's a smart lady." Starsky said.

"Yep." Hutch agreed. "Wanna catch me up?"

Starsky listened to the wind for a long time, almost long enough that Hutch was convinced he wasn't going to go for it. Then he began to talk, drawing Hutch into his world.

Hutch followed his partner through a cold deserted hospital, edgy with fever and paranoid that his every action could possibly kill something he cared desperately about.

He stood with Starsky in a bank, with a stolen shirt and shoes, trying not to act like a nervous bank robber while getting money out of his own account.

He followed his brother into a strange world that looked brand new, despite the knowledge that he'd been there before. Up into the mountains. Up to a cabin that was a nightmare he would have to call home.

Through Starsky's words they hiked together, planned together, ate bare bones meals, shivered through cold nights and watched the days fly by with nothing to make them worthwhile.

Each sunrise, there came the time to make the decision, should they go back down the mountain, call Dobey, take the tongue lashing they were due and admit defeat? Or should they stay on the mountain, stretch out supplies one more day, keep looking for a body that was somehow supposed to end this nightmare?

Then the body. The town. A re-connection with home that was bittersweet. Then the snow began to fall.

The decision Starsky made.

The hair raising rush up the mountain, pursued by killers.

Into the snow, into the woods, into a trap that nature herself created. Right before his knee popped, Starsky ground to a halt and shifted in his chair, the memory of the pain echoing in his leg.

"Starsky.."Hutch said.

His partner's voice came to him, tight with pain, or emotion, or both. "Yeah?"

"I'm here, buddy, huh. Take it easy."

Hutch heard a rush of air leave Starsky's lungs, and watched his partner's head go back, his chest working twice as hard as it should have been. He realized what was happening a moment later and pushed up in the bed, grabbing the top quilt and using the support of the bed to get to his feet and around to where his partner sat.

Starsky's arms were wrapped around his bare chest, the muscles so tightly bunched that his partner's arms and chest had become one solid mass. Hutch threw the quilt over him then got to one knee by the chair. He pushed Starsky up, getting his shoulders and arms under his partner's back before he used as little brute force as possible to lift Starsky's torso from the chair. With his legs still propped up on the bed, Hutch let his partner's head and shoulders sink to the floor and sat, propping Starsky's head, and rubbing his chest and arms through the blanket.

"Come on, buddy. Take it easy. Hey, listen. I...I need ya to finish the story, and you can't if you're doin' this." Hutch glanced around the room, his eyes landing on the pot in the window. "You know I'm proud of you partner. Those paint cans, and the blazes on the trees, that's Minnesota smart right there."

Starsky's eyes stopped roving and they fixed on Hutch's chest, migrating toward his face. Hutch closed his eyes for a moment, finding the truth, knowing that anything less would be a betrayal of what he was trying to do. "It's called mountaineering, what you did. Most people have to be born into that sort of thing, or go to school for it. Like ranger school. Buddy, you...you managed it all on your own. That's something to be proud of."

Another gasp of air left his partner, sounding like a sob. Hutch put his hand against the side of Starsky's head, and kept it there.

"You came through for me, Partner." Hutch said, "Can you imagine how hard it would have been...if Dobey and I had gone up that mountain, found that burned out cabin, found that burned up car...found you-" Hutch swallowed hard. Up until that moment he had been the wise parent in Luyu's story, pointing toward hope. Providing courage. Pushing up instead of pulling down.

Then he'd realized the sacrifice his partner had made in choosing to fight for survival. He hadn't found his partner, frozen stiff and covered in snow, still stuck in a tree fall because he wouldn't brave the pain of relocating a busted knee. He hadn't been forced to drag his own barely recovered body up the mountain to a lean-to to retrieve a man who just couldn't live with the agony of walking through rough country on torn ligaments.

In his own way, with all the knowledge he possessed, Starsky had put every ounce of effort into surviving. Even if leaving the hospital had been impulsive and stupid, Starsky had proven something. He could be trusted to keep going. He could be trusted to preserve their partnership by not giving up.

"I'm proud of ya." Hutch said, drawing a careful breath through his nose.

Starsky's chest had eased, and the gasps of air were turning gradually into normal breaths, sounding more like sighs. Through the blanket Hutch could feel layers of muscle relaxing, then his partner's hand closing around his wrist.

There was light in the room now. Dawn pushing through the snow around the window, through the glass and gems in the healed pot. The light spread in a spectrum through the room and Hutch caught the flicker of blue in Starsky's eyes before they closed. Hutch used the light and studied the bruises peeking over Starsky's shoulders. Another bruise at his neck from the night before. The cuts on his face. The windburn that made his head two shades darker than his chest.

"Starsk...if I'd had a gun...if I'd even thought I could have found a faster way...I would have."

Starsky groaned and patted his partner's wrist, shaking his head. "I's just scared." He mumbled, still taking in breaths like they were a rare commodity.

"I think we both are." Hutch said. "I think that's what life is. One long run of being more or less scared of everything around ya."

Starsky took a few breaths then said, "I'm not fond of it."

"Me neither."

"How do you choose not to be?"

Hutch thought about that then said, "Faith. Faith in...God. Faith in your partner. Faith in humanity. It's a hard, uphill slog, but as long as you keep looking up…"

"That's hard to do." Starsky said.

Hutch nodded. "You don't get dizzy til you look down."

A smile popped into the corner of Starsky's mouth and he laughed softly. "Sounds like one of those rotten songs you write."

"Rotten songs?" Hutch said carefully, his eyebrows going up, fighting a smile.

"What was it...1827 Kansas City...her hair was pretty?"

"It's 1927, and it's a clever rhyme, thank you."

"Clever…" Starsky trailed off, closing his eyes against the colors filling the room.

"Doin' ok? How's your leg, huh?"

"You're closer to it, you tell me."

"Looks like a leg." Hutch said.

"Thank you, doctor, you've cured me."

Hutch chuckled then felt Starsky's hand tighten.

"Hey...thanks."

Hutch met his eyes. "You did good, Starsk."

Starsky kept his gaze and Hutch saw a little more peace there.

"I just got one problem."

"Yeah?" Starsky asked.

"I don't think I'll be able to get off this floor."

"Oh, is that where we are?" Starsky lifted his head, tried to move his shoulders, then groaned, stiff and sore. "Me neither."

"Should we call the doctor?"

"She's awful nice, Hutch. Let's let her sleep."

"Ok."

"How'd you even get me down here?" Starsky asked, craning his neck, certain he'd been in a chair at some point.

"Skill. Brute strength."

Starsky snorted then started to laugh, and covered his mouth, struggling to stop. Hutch gave him a glare.

"Want me to prove it? Wanna arm wrestle?"

"Arm wrestle!? You kidding? I'd win, hands down."

"Awful confident for a guy stuck upside down."

"You can't get up off the floor!" Starsky protested.

"Neither can you."

"My point exactly."

Hutch choked on a laugh, then looked to the door of the room. "You know...if we did get up, we could make some coffee."

"Make breakfast. Bacon and hot cakes and orange juice."

"The doc would be real impressed." Hutch said.

"By a bunch'a cripples making breakfast?"

"Sure."

Starsky thought about it for a moment then shrugged. "Ok. I'm game."


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

By 7:15 am Harlow O'Neill, the carrot-top proprietor of Tehachapi's lone towing operation, and the owner of the best snow plow in town, had cleared the major streets of snow, including a path up to the house and ranch owned by Luyu Samara. As the plow backed out of the drive a green, 1969 Chevy 4x4 pulled in and parked with a squeal of brakes on the slight incline. Captain Harold C. Dobey climbed out of the passenger side and stretched in the crisp morning air before grabbing a bag of groceries from the middle seat. Samara stepped down from the driver's side, scanned the ranch, then reached for a broom that had been leaned into the protected eave of the garage that sat under the house. He cleared the steps to the porch, brushing most of the snow away with practiced strokes, then making a path across the deck. Dobey followed carefully in his wake.

Samara used a key to open the front door and stepped into the warm kitchen and a wave of smells that reminded him of home, childhood, family and all good things between. He expected to see his sister at the stove, working her magic over multiple pans of frying goodness.

Instead he found her seated at her kitchen table, her hair loose around her shoulders, tucked into a sweater and smiling over a cup of steaming coffee.

At the stove, flipping pancakes and stirring cooking bacon was the blonde cop, Hutch. He'd surrendered his shirt and jeans to the washer and dryer churning in the corner and wore a robe and one of the pairs of sweatpants Samara had lent to the two men the night before. His hair was still damp from a recent shower, his gaze directed toward his partner, one hand pointing, in mid-shout.

"You crumble it, Starsky. On top. Don't press it down in."

"I'm crumbling, I'm crumbling." Starsky was muttering, seated on the counter next to a glass pan full of batter, his hands caked with brown sugar, butter and flour. He too wore the sweats and shirt that Samara had loaned, both sets of clothing from the laundry that tended to collect in a small station.

"Hey Cap, Sheriff." Starsky muttered casually then searched around him for something to wipe his hands on.

"Wow...smells really good in here." Dobey commented, stepping into the room after Samara and shutting the cold out.

"Hey, Cap. What'd ya bring?" Hutch called, eyeing the paper bag.

"All the good stuff." Dobey said pulling milk, orange juice, eggs and fruit from the bag. "Oh and...this is just a copy, but I thought you men would appreciate seeing it." Dobey pulled a tri-folded piece of paper from the bottom of the bag and handed it to Starsky as he finished wiping his hands clean.

Starsky read the words printed on the front fold and gave a triumphant laugh.

"What?"

"It's an audit."

"What?" Hutch asked, covering the pans on the stove and turning down the heat before he reached for the paper.

"For the prison." Starsky said, grinning. "Prison board is comin' down on 'em."

Hutch took a deep breath and grinned, turning toward the pleased looks coming from Samara and Dobey. "I'm impressed." He said, his voice a little thicker than usual.

Dobey nodded, smiling so hard his eyes almost disappeared. "With the combination of Samara's testimony, your testimonies, Starsky's pictures and Sam Aralto's article, the judge couldn't possibly ignore what was goin' down. He had the prison commission on the horn an hour after I called him. The warrant for a search and the official audit came through the telefax two hours ago."

"Well...what are you doing here? Who's gonna arrest Ackabee? What about the prisoners?" Hutch asked.

"All four of my prisoners are being watched by my deputy." Samara said.

"We thought about waiting until you guys were up for it to go in after Ackabee, but the way BeeKay, Usher and Duncan were talking, he'da been gone before we got there."

"He's behind bars, that's what counts." Starsky said.

"Sure your deputy can handle those guys by himself?" Hutch asked Samara.

"If he can't, my dispatcher can." Samara said, prompting Dobey to smile and Luyu to giggle. She stood and shuffled to her brother, wrapping her arms around him and giving him a kiss before she tried to get to the coffee pot.

Starsky stopped her, pulling her gently by the waist back into his arms. "Nah, nah, nah. You are now the patient. We are the doctors. We will serve the guests."

Luyu sighed melodramatically, then gave her brother an eye roll that had him chuckling.

"Back to your seat, young lady." Starsky said, guiding her by the shoulders until she was out of reach. From his perch he was able to grab two ceramic cups and filled them with coffee. "So how'd it go down?"

Samara shrugged. "We called Ackabee and asked to speak to the warden about a private matter. He played the part of an overworked guard to a T, and was giving us a tall tale about the warden being ill. He didn't begin to squirm until we told him that we had captured two of his escaped convicts."

"That rattled him." Dobey said with a chuckle. "But Samara played it dumb, had Ackabee purger himself three or four times into a recording tape before Ackabee agreed to come down to pick up the prisoners."

"He walked in the door, we arrested him." Samara said, toasting with his coffee cup before taking a sip.

"That would'a been a lovely sight to see." Starsky said, sipping from his own cup before he pushed the pan of batter toward his partner.

"It's a lovely sound you'll get to hear more than once." Dobey said.

Hutch opened the oven door, stepped back from the wave of heat then considered how he was going to get the pan into the oven. Starsky watched him for two seconds then carefully slid from the counter and did it himself.

"Big baby." He muttered.

"Cripple." Hutch muttered back, then went back to his pans. He collected bacon onto one plate, scrambled eggs onto another, then poured another round of pancakes. "Help yourselves gentlemen, and lady. Plates are up top."

"Thank you, Hutch." Dobey said, then stepped back and bowed gallantly toward Luyu. While she got her food Samara collected juice cups and silverware and set the table.

"So how did Ackabee get along with his guys in the cells?" Starsky asked.

"He wasn't too pleased with them, but after he realized how much we had against him, including the tapes, he kept his mouth shut. Used his one phone call to phone a lawyer and went quietly into his cell." Dobey said, carrying the groceries to the table.

"He's a hard man. Really believed in his own set of rules." Starsky said, sneaking his hand into the pile of bacon and almost getting a piece before Hutch slapped his fingers. The piece of bacon broke in half and Starsky tucked his half into his mouth before Hutch could stop him, beaming smugly. The bacon was like heaven, only crispier and saltier.

"No manners."

"I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry. M'lady." Hutch shifted out of the way and let Luyu past, cheekily complimenting her choices while she selected her food, grinning when he had her giggling in minutes. Before she walked back to the table she gave both men a kiss on the cheek. "Thank you, both of you, for breakfast."

"She likes our breakfast, Hutch."

"She likes my breakfast, Starsk. Your breakfast is still in the oven."

"So...if Ackabee is in your jail, who's runnin' the prison? Where's the warden?" Starsky asked.

"The prison board had a deputy warden flown in about an hour ago." Samara said, stepping into the small area of the kitchen to collect food onto a plate. "He called just before we left the station. The warden wasn't anywhere on the premises."

Hutch and Starsky blinked at each other, then Hutch asked. "Do they think Ackabee killed him?"

Dobey stepped in to grab his food, waiting for the freshest of the pancakes to be served before he went to the table. "The officers that went up with the deputy warden are to secure every guard, every prisoner, and every possible form of evidence first, then wait for the investigators to get there. The well on this one is deep, and the judge who signed the warrant was explicit about the kind of clean chain of evidence he wanted to see. To that end, you and Starsky have an open invitation to participate in the investigation."

"That's a nice thought, Cap, but we're not the arresting officers." Starsky said.

"You and Hutch arrested the other three. And you started the investigation."

A thought hit and Hutch snapped his fingers. "Orlando. He alright?"

"He's fine." Dobey said, washing down pancake with a sip of coffee. "We instructed the officers to locate him and verify his well-being, and separate him from the rest of the population if necessary."

"What about...uh...Tuttle...a prisoner. Tuttle, his body was in the infirmary when I got there." Starsky said.

Samara shook his head. "The officers reported all prisoners alive and well."

"Ackabee had plenty of time to get rid of the body." Hutch said quietly.

"I get the feeling they start digging into that mountain they're gonna find a graveyard."

"The mountain is angry." Samara agreed, thoughtfully.

"Starsk...coffee cake is done."

"Oh." Starsky grabbed hot mats in the shape of gloves and fished his pan out of the oven, grinning at the otherwise perfect crumble top.

Hutch leaned in and stared at a white gelatinous lump that had formed in the middle.

"What's that?"

"Coffee cake."

"No that. In the middle there."

"It's an egg."

"Starsky…"

"You told me to put an egg in it."

"You're supposed to mix the egg in. It's supposed to give the coffee cake buoyancy, not sit in the middle like a...a boil."

Starsky stared at the cake, then looked to his partner, aware of the titters coming from the table. "You didn't say that."

"I didn't think I had to."

"You can still eat it...just...eat around it."

"Unbelievable."

"So Doc, how are my boys?" Dobey asked, smiling at the young woman who hadn't yet stopped blushing.

"I think they'll live. I would recommend x-rays for Starsky and antibiotics and fluids for both. But they wouldn't even stay in their beds here, I can't imagine trying to keep them in a hospital."

Starsky and Hutch, eating their breakfasts at the convenience of the counter exchanged looks, but kept quiet.

Dobey leaned back far enough to give his men meaningful looks then tucked back into his breakfast.

"I'm going to get a search and rescue team ready today, and start them on the mountain tomorrow. We'll use your grid, Sergeant Starsky, and pick up where you left off." Samara said.

"In the meantime I'm ordering you two men to the hospital here in town for treatment. Once the doctor, or Ms. Samara has declared you healthy enough I want you to go back to the city and stay there for twenty-four hours."

"What!?"

"Why?"

"For one thing, the two of you look like refugees, and I won't have my men dressing in rags through an entire investigation. For another, we still don't know for sure that every man connected with this case is accounted for. Let the officers at the prison get things settled and secure before you present yourselves again as easy targets. Besides, neither of you are armed and neither of you have your badges."

Starsky and Hutch nodded assent to the order, before Starsky eyed the coffee cake and took his first bite. It was more chewy than he expected but still edible. In a day it would be the consistency of a rubber band. Hutch watched him eat a bite then snuck a fork into the pan and tasted it himself. Starsky watched, waiting for a reaction, got a non-committal shrug and narrowed his eyes.

"Want us to bring anything for you, Cap?"

"No. I'll be heading back to the city once things are settled here, that is if I can request your hospitality for another day or so, Sheriff."

Samara nodded, mouth full with the last of his food.

A buzzer sounded and Luyu stood, excusing herself and leaving the room. Starsky watched her leave then quietly set his plate down and limped into the hallway after her. Hutch turned in time to watch his partner disappear and, mouth full of food, followed the parade.

Ten minutes later he and Starsky were dressed in cleaner, drier versions of the clothing they'd worn the day before. Once they'd cleaned up the meal they had made they climbed once more into the back of the ambulance with Luyu and obediently traveled to the hospital.

They were perfect patients, in fact, until Luyu gave them the bad news that she would not be treating them. What followed were three hours of grousing and harassing the medical staff until Luyu was paged over the intercom system and asked to "please report to examining rooms 5 and 7!". She entered the large room, normally divided by an accordian-style wall made of aluminum and covered in canvas. The wall had been pushed back and both Starsky and Hutch sat on separate gurneys, dressed, treated and petulant.

"It's about time. You know they heard "GSW" and tried to cut my shirt off." Hutch complained, easing off the gurney and snatching up his cane, and the bag of pills he'd been issued.

"They wanted to cut my jeans off! Crazy women! What, are there no guys up here?" Starsky whined, reaching for his crutches and his own bag of pills.

Luyu couldn't help but smile, and walked with both men back to the ambulance. She drove them to the police station, saw that they got into the Torino without incident and watched them leave Tehachapi from the windows of the library.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

"You know what I don't get about it?"

"What?"

"Ackabee had that prison sewn up tight. New hires were always assigned to him to be trained. He either had control of the warden, or was...manufacturing his presence in some way. He had the perfect setting for anything from a...a drug factory, to guns, to...you name it. But none of that was going on."

"Right."

"So where's his motivation?" Hutch asked, eyes trained mostly on the road. "Why is he doing it?"

"Samara said he was buying properties all over the mountain. He owned the cabin that BeeKay and the others burned down."

"Ok...somebody buys up a lotta land, he could be...trying to get mining rights, or oil rights. Planning to build something, develop the land."

Starsky thought for a moment then said, "Yeah but...the mountain is owned by the government. Maybe he controls a strip of land on one side, but...that far from the prison..."

Hutch was quiet for a moment then shook his head. "Doesn't make sense."

"You know the man we could be asking is sitting in a jail cell right now, possibly arranging bail."

Hutch shook his head. "With what the judge has against him there's not much chance he gets out on bail."

"What if he did though? And we tailed him."

Hutch thought for a moment then shook his head. "Ackabee was smart enough to clam up once he knew what Dobey and Samara had on him. I'll bet he just sits if he gets released. The man's been in the system longer than we have."

"What about one of his lieutenants? What if we let BeeKay or Duncan go?"

"Why not Hadrian?" Hutch said, flicking his glance toward his partner.

"Why not let me get out and stand in front'a the car and kill me right now?"

"Ah, come on. He won't go after you."

"Let's just scrap the whole idea." Starsky said.

"Alright," Hutch said, raising a hand in surrender.

Starsky pursed his lips and rolled his eyes and watched the scenery pass by for a moment. A few minutes later he was jostling Hutch's arm.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute. Pull over."

"Pull over where? We're in the middle of nowhere."

"Just pull over, turn around."

Hutch slowed the Torino and turned in the middle of the otherwise deserted highway, cruising back up the road at 10 miles-per-hour until Starsky said, "Ok, stop."

Hutch's partner got out of the car, grabbing one of his crutches and carefully crossing the highway, standing in front of a sign that marked the valley as a nationally protected watershed area.

"He's sight-seeing now." Hutch muttered, watching Starsky for a moment before he tapped the horn.

Starsky waved him off, annoyed, then turned to face the distant mountain range before crossing the road and climbing back into the Torino.

"What was that about?"

"Something...maybe. Ackabee told me that he was divorced. That his wife took everything and all he had left was his job, and that mountain. He said he'd given up on retirement."

"Starsky...that's sad, but it's not enough to kill."

"It is if the mountain has monetary value."

"That sign says the valley is a watershed area."

"Sure but water's big bucks in the right climate. And it can't be the only natural resource out here. Tehachapi mountain serves an entire town."

"You're suggesting that a prison guard is plotting to sew up the natural resources of a mountain to extort a small town?"

"Maybe his ex-wife lives in the town."

Hutch shook his head, started the engine and pulled the Torino back onto the road, headed for Bay City.

"The fact of the matter is we just don't know enough yet. And Dobey was right, we're ill-prepared to do our jobs."

"What if it's not water. What if it's...gold, or uranium, or-"

"Moonrocks."

"You're makin' fun of me."

"I'm, I'm not, Starsky I just..I'm tired. Ok? I'm sore. I want to go home, take some pain pills and pass out for day."

Starksy sighed, "Yeah...ok."

"Ok?"

Starsky nodded and stared out the window. As the miles stretched he tried to redirect his mind to anything but the case. Girls were an easy distraction but the first one that came to mind was Luyu and that sent him straight back to Tehachapi...the mountain…

"Wolf traps." Starsky said as the edge of a small town came into view.

"Wolf traps?" Hutch asked.

"Yeah. Before I even got up there, I bought a rifle from an old guy in a general store and he warned me about all the old wolf traps up there on the mountain."

Hutch glanced at his partner then back at the road. "That was nice of him, Starsky."

"I didn't tell him which mountain I was going to be on. There's a whole range of mountains up there."

"At one point I'm sure there was a whole range of wolftrappers, too." Hutch said.

"Yeah but...there were no wolves. I was on that mountain for 9 days. I didn't see tracks, I didn't hear howling, I was the spitting image of a wounded animal and nothing attacked me."

"Well I hate to have to be the one to tell ya, Starsk, but you smelled pretty rancid when we found ya."

"I didn't have a shower...and that's not the point. The point is, if an old man in a store miles away from the mountain knows about the old wolf trappers...the traps should be old. Rusted. Barely working."

Hutch stared ahead a moment, his jaw working as he thought. "The trap that Aralto ended up in…"

"Looked like it was six, eight months old, maybe. I mean, the Torino's got a steel body, I know what eight months of wear and tear on steel looks like."

"So if there are no wolves, and the wolf trappers are gone, and the wolf trapper cabins are gone…" Hutch began.

"Who is setting out new traps. And why?" Starsky finished.

"You may have something there."

"Thank you."

"Think we can get Samara's dispatcher on that thing?" Hutch said, gesturing toward the radio.

"Might not get past that mountain range." Starsky said, instantly remembering their first trip down the mountain, then pushing it from his mind. "I got three phone numbers, find me a pay phone."

Hutch drove for ten minutes watching one side of the road with Starsky watching the other. Outside a diner in a tiny pit-stop that contained about five different buildings, Starsky spotted a pay phone booth and had Hutch pull over. After he'd extricated himself from the car he bent down and asked, "Wanna go in there, get us some lunch to go?"

"Ok." Hutch agreed, leaving his partner at the phone booth and parking the Torino at the front of the mostly empty parking lot.

Starsky watched Hutch climb out of the car looking like an old man. He dropped a few dimes into the machine then dialed the first number, the one for the police station at Tehachapi. While the phone rang he watched a Jeep pull into the diner parking lot, so spattered with mud and salt, it looked like the bottom half had been painted gray. The vehicle drove, without pausing, around the side of the diner and disappeared behind it.

Starsky winced at the thought of what the salt on the roads of Tehachapi might have been doing to the underside of the Torino, then was distracted by the sound of the dispatcher picking up the call.

"Hey uh...Yvonne...you never met me, but your boss has. I'm Detective Starsky…" The woman on the other line interrupted and Starsky smiled, not in the least ashamed that he and his partner's reputations had preceded them. "Yeah. We uh...we'll bring you up a wedding present to make up for it. I promise. Listen...is Captain Dobey there? No? Out at the prison, huh? Can you patch me through to Sheriff Samara? Yeah, I'll hold."

Starsky's thoughts wandered back to the jeep, bothered by it. It had looked like the jeep that BeeKay and the others had been in on the mountain. But it wasn't the same car. All jeeps looked alike, he told himself, and tried to brush it off.

A few minutes later glass broke behind him, he heard the bark of a gun and he was punched in the back two times.

The glass of the phone booth came up on him fast, but the pain slamming into him was coming from behind, making it impossible to breathe. His left hand was still closed around the phone and he clung to it, struggling to stay on his feet. His vision was swimming, raw pain competing with the numbness of impact.

"Starsky…" The voice was distant, tinny. Coming from the phone. Starsky tried to lift his arm to get the phone to his ear but he couldn't.

The jeep he'd seen was behind him, but peeled around past the phone booth and took off toward Tehachapi. It had fishtailed in the gravel, giving him enough time to catch the plate numbers.

They were important, those numbers, and Starsky knew it. He devoted them to memory, staring at the plate until the body of his partner obscured his view.

"Come on, Starsk. Hang on. Breathe, come on."

Hutch had him, hands under his shoulders, pulling him from the phone booth, holding him up so that he was still on his feet. He finally managed to drag a breath into his lungs and it sounded like Lazarus rising from the dead.

God it hurt..

His whole back was on fire and he could feel Hutch's hands, pressing against the heat and the hurt and making it worse. Starsky's right hand came up and latched onto Hutch's shoulder, fingers digging in, competing with the pain.

"Wha-What...did they hit me with? Elephant gun?"

"Hang on. Hang on. I'm gonna set ya down. Just...let go of the phone, Starsk." Starsky felt Hutch pry his fingers from the plastic receiver, then he was on the ground, on his side, pressed against cold gravel that felt strangely good against his temple.

He heard Hutch talking to someone a few feet away, shouting instructions, but no one had come out of the diner. The phone...Samara.

The license plate, Starsky thought. Samara could put out an APB. Catch the bastards, he thought. Don't let them get away.

"Hutch, plate."

"I'm right here, buddy." Then Hutch was talking to Samara again. Telling him he didn't know what had happened. Telling him he didn't know who.

"Hutch!" Starsky forced out as loud as he could. "Plate. License plate." The pain was dying a little, fading into a dull ache that was almost worse than the fire.

"You got a plate number?" Hutch asked, breathless.

"Yeah." Starsky breathed and gave him the numbers.

Hutch repeated them three times into the phone, and Starsky wondered when his lungs would start to fill with fluid. He'd been hit in all the wrong spots. All the places where vital body parts should have been. One of the bullets might have even busted a rib the way his side felt, but he couldn't tell how bad it was. Couldn't feel the blood.

Hutch finished on the phone and Starsky heard gravel rattle, felt the sudden cold of the air against his back as Hutch pulled his shirt up. "Hang on, buddy, hang on."

"How bad is it?" Starsky asked, felt his shirt fall against his skin again and expected to feel Hutch's hands pressing into the pain. Instead he listened to the knock of Hutch's cane against gravel, then raking through broken glass.

"Hold out your hand." Hutch said and Starsky lifted his left hand, and felt Hutch tuck something round into it. "Rubber bullets, Starsk."

Starsky stared at it, a misshapen lump of hard rubber that might have once had a conical nose.

"You've got nickle-sized welts on your back, little bit of blood…probably gonna have bruises the size of melons." A second bullet was plunked down on the ground in front of him and his partner stopped fishing in the glass.

Starsky groaned and set the bullet that was in his hand with its brother on the ground. He closed his eyes tightly and felt his partner's hand coming to rest on his arm.

"Samara's dispatcher is getting an ambulance."

Starsky groaned again and said, "I think they cracked a rib."

"Glass probably saved you from worse. You recognize anybody?"

"Didn't see 'em. The jeep was the same kind BeeKay had though."

Hutch breathed for a moment then groaned. "They probably followed us from Tehachapi. I'm sorry, partner."

"S'ok." Starsky muttered, "Ackabee sending guys...to kill me is the last bit of rope we needed to hang him good."

"Yeah." Hutch said. "How you feel?"

"Hurts."

Hutch leaned forward and Starsky felt cold air again. "They look like giant bee stings."

"Cold feels good."

"Yeah?" Hutch asked, then shouted, "Hey!"

Starsky opened his eyes and found that a crowd had gathered. If three people could be considered a crowd. One of them was a waitress who jogged over to them, the second time Hutch shouted, "Hey!"

"Is he okay? Did he get shot?"

"He'll be okay. I got an ambulance coming, but I could use some ice. You know, wrap it up in a towel or something."

"Okay, okay. I'll be right back."

"Should'a ordered a beer." Starsky muttered.

Hutch laughed softly and his grip tightened on Starsky's arm.

"Did you tell Samara about the wolf traps?" Hutch asked.

"Didn't get the chance. Is that ambulance gonna take us back to Tehachapi?"

"It's probably closest." Hutch said.

"Dobey's gonna be mad."

"I think he'll-" Hutch cut himself off, then said, "Huh."

"What?"

"Green jeep?"

"Yeah…" Starsky said, then felt Hutch's hand close tighter around his wrist, a second later he was being pulled upright.

"Lots of salt and mud covering the bottom half?"

"Oh, don't tell me." Starsky muttered, pushing up with his left leg while his partner yanked him to his feet.

"They're comin' back." Hutch said, forcing the both of them across the parking lot and into the driver's side of the Torino.

"Probably figured out the gun had rubber bullets." Starsky managed, groaning as he slid across the seat to the passenger side.

"That would seem to imply that they are also carrying real bullets." Hutch said, turning the engine over and peeling backwards out of the parking lot.

"Then let's see what we got." Starsky muttered, leaning away from the seat so that his right arm was propped against the dash, fishing through the glove box with his left.

Hutch pulled onto the road, heading toward the jeep and burning rubber to get there faster.

"Got a flash grenade." Starsky muttered, setting the canister on the seat between them. "Smoke grenade." That joined the first. "Extra clips...but no gun."

Hutch started rolling down the driver's side window, keeping an eye on the driver of the jeep as they got closer and keeping his head as low as possible.

"Flares…"

"Road flares?"

"Yep. Three of 'em." Starsky said, then sucked in a breath between clenched teeth, panting around a wave of pain before he dug deeper into the glove compartment. "Car manual. Electrical tape. Tin of mints. And a map. Hutch...Hutch, you're in the left lane."

"I know that."

"Well, they're coming. Don't you think you should get outta there lane?"

"Pull the pin on the flash grenade, and give it me."

"The pin or the grenade?"

"The grenade, ya…"

"Be nice." Starsky warned and set the first canister in his partner's hand, fixing Hutch's thumb against the trigger before he pulled the pin. "I don't think they're gonna swerve."

"We're gonna swerve."

"Really? Before or after we hit them?"

In response Hutch switched the canister to his left hand, took the wheel in his right just as the bullets started flying toward them. Starsky watched holes appear in the hood, then ducked under a hole that sent a crack down the length of the windshield. Hutch swerved at the last moment tossing the canister out the window.

Starsky twisted in the seat, watched the canister roll harmlessly to the side of the road and pop in a shower of dirt, gravel and smoke.

"You missed." Starsky barked.

Hutch watched the jeep in the rearview mirror, the tires spitting smoke as the driver slammed on the brakes and forced the jeep into a sharp turn.

"You think you can do better, here's your chance."

Starsky braced himself against the seat and focused on protecting his back while Hutch threw the car into a spin. He was getting tired of not being armed. Tired of his only option for self-defense being to throw things at people. He was irritated at the number of times Ackabee's men had tried to kill him, and while he appreciated their failure, he would've also appreciated catching a break.

As Hutch pulled the car out of the spin Starsky said, "Stop the car."

"What?"

"Just stop the car, I got a plan."


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Starsky reached for the spare clips in the glove box.

Hutch watched as his partner taped a clip of ammunition to the flammable tip of two of the road flares, then laid the third flare a centimeter higher than the others and taped all three together.

"What are they doing?" Starsky asked.

"Sitting, watching us."

"Good."

"Do I have a part in your plan?"

"You're the getaway driver." Starsky said, gathering the taped flares and the smoke bomb into his right hand. Starsky leaned forward, taking stabilizing breaths with his left hand propped against the dash, and felt Hutch's hand lifting his shirt again. "Still bleeding?"

"No." Hutch said, then grabbed Starsky's arm when he reached for the door handle. "You have remembered that they have guns...with bullets."

"Yeah." Starsky said, face pinched with pain and a general dislike for the whole situation. "I'm hoping they think I'm Superman, now."

Hutch let him go and Starsky stepped out of the car, shutting the door behind him. He limped out into the middle of the road, back hunched, the flares slightly behind his right leg, the smoke bomb in his left hand. Straddling the striped white line, Starsky stared down the men in the jeep, too far away to recognize them but trying to be intimidating anyway. They responded with a rev of the engine that rocked the vehicle. Starsky pulled the pin then stooped and let the smoke canister roll down the middle line watching it until it came to rest 20 feet away. In the three seconds between the moment the can came to rest and the smoke popped, Starsky gave the men in the jeep a bright smile and waggled his fingers obnoxiously. Then the smoke popped and the road started to fill with smoke. Starsky waited until he couldn't see the jeep anymore and rushed back to the Torino slinging his bad leg in through the open window, followed by his left, and perching on the sill.

"When I say, "Go", hit the gas." Starsky shouted over the sound of gunshots going wild, the rev of the jeep's engine and the hiss of the smoke bomb. Starsky counted down, hands poised to light the flares, listening to the tires and the engine and staring at a building cloud of dense smoke that told him nothing and spat lead at him. One of the bullets found a home in the door beneath where he sat and he shouted, "Go, go go!"

The Torino took off and Starsky fell back, almost sliding out of the car until he felt Hutch's hand close around his left ankle, anchoring him. Starsky lit the flares, found a handhold under the roof then passed into the thick cloud of smoke at the same time as the jeep.

The other car passed by the Torino close enough that Starsky could hear the confused voices of the men, shouting epitaphs when they realized just how thick the cloud of smoke was. He tossed the flare, heard a responding shout and pulled himself back into the Torino, his back scraping along the sill of the window on his way in.

Hutch heard a choked cry and made sure in rushed glances that his partner hadn't taken a round or lost a limb. He checked the rearview mirror, eyeing the cloud of smoke.

The rounds that Starsky had lit on fire were popping faintly behind them like popcorn and Hutch could hear the squeal of the jeep's tires.

Hutch called. "You ok?"

"For a punching bag..." Starsky gasped. "Sure."

"Hang on, partner." Hutch said then eased down on the brakes, guiding the Torino to the side of the road, his eyes all but fixed on the rear view mirror. Hutch threw the parking brake and turned in his seat resting a hand on Starsky's right arm and pulling him forward until Hutch could see his back. He peeled the shirt away, wincing at the fresh blood, but satisfied that there were no new holes.

Hutch held onto him, until Starsky was able to open his eyes. His face was soaked with sweat, a fringe of curls matted to his forehead.

"Why'd you stop?" Starsky asked, freeing a hand and clamping down on Hutch's arm.

"Jeep went off the road."

"They still alive?"

"Don't know, but I think they've given up."

"Oh good." Starsky swallowed, panting less as the pain faded. "What should we do now?"

Hutch shifted in the driver's seat, finding a position that didn't put stress on his stitches. "Oh." He sighed. "We should probably make sure they're ok."

"Ok."

"And...secure the criminals."

"Yeah."

"Then...I could go for a beer."

"Sounds terrific."

By the time the ambulance arrived, followed by the Sheriff's 4x4, Starsky and Hutch sat on the abused hood of the Torino drinking from covered coffee cups and tossing pebbles, from a pile on the hood between them, toward an overturned hubcap, set on the road fifteen feet away. On the trunk of the Torino was a line up of weaponry, broken down, with the weapons on one side of the trunk and the clips or loose rounds on the other.

Seated against the walls of the overturned jeep, fifty feet away from the striped tomato, were three prisoners. Each bore signs of rudimentary first aid care and had been secured to the jeep body, their hands tied high above their heads with the laces from their own shoes.

The 4x4 stopped at the Jeep, Samara and Dobey leaving the truck and approaching the vehicle with a combination of caution and disbelief. The ambulance drove ahead, parking a few feet from the trunk of the Torino.

Luyu threw the driver's side door open and dragged a large bag with her from the cab, shouting instructions to a second medic sliding from the passenger side. Luyu went to the Torino, the other medic ran toward the jeep.

Dobey watched his men. He watched Hutchinson slip from the hood of the car and arrest Luyu's progress with an arm around her shoulders. Hutch ducked his head to her ear and she began to nod, taking in and processing information as they closed the distance to the Torino together. Starsky looked exhausted compared to his partner, and got to his feet carefully, sliding one arm over Luyu's shoulders and giving her a kiss on the cheek. The other arm was supported by Hutch, and the group moved at a snail's pace from the Torino to the ambulance. Dobey caught sight of the strange lumps attached to Starsky's back for a split second, then his detective disappeared behind the double doors of the ambulance.

Before Dobey could cross the distance between the Jeep and the Torino, Samara stood from where he'd been squatting, searching the interior of the overturned vehicle. Without a word he handed what remained of a set of three road flares, still bound together by a sliver of tape, to the captain, then started pulling each of the prisoners to his feet.

Dobey stared at the flares, knowing there was going to be one hell of a conversation explaining all this. He wasn't sure how long it would take for that conversation to happen. He arrived at the back of the ambulance in time to watch Hutch and Luyu carefully freeing Starsky from his tattered shirt. The lumps he'd seen were lying scattered on the ambulance floor. A combination of ice, tape and kitchen towels. Then he saw Starsky's back and felt his blood begin to boil. Two craters, a violent mix of red, blue and purple, had formed either side of his spine. Bruises radiated out from around the wounds, one broader than the other, showing the secondary damage that the impact had done under the skin. There was very little blood on the surface of the skin, all of the damage internal. Hidden.

Dobey had seen wounds like that before, and he knew the culprit instantly, all the more ready to do harm to the man that shot Starsky.

"Hutchinson." Dobey said quietly, letting his men know that he was there and waiting for the blonde cop to talk to him when he could. Once Starsky was settled on his stomach on the gurney in the back of the ambulance, Hutch stepped down from the back. He filled Dobey in on the past two hours, dropped two spent rubber bullets into the captain's hands, then said, "We had a chance to chat with our new friends over there."

"After you read them their rights?" Dobey asked.

Hutch gave him a look and after a moment Dobey looked away.

"Yeah, Captain. After we read them their rights. One of them, the one with the goatee, is Walters. He's one of the prison guards that attacked Starsk in the lounge at the prison. He insisted that he wasn't the one to pull the trigger today, and that he was willing to exchange information about the game, and the locations of some of the bodies for leniency."

"Game?"

"Yeah…" Hutch said, looking like he might be sick. "We got a local map from that diner over there and got a rough idea of some locations. If you can have Samara meet us at the hospital with Starsky's grid we can get a jump on the search."

"Right." Dobey said, starting toward the 4x4.

"Oh!" Hutch shouted, "Keep those three isolated. Don't put them in earshot of Ackabee."

"Got it. Get your partner taken care of."

********************************

"It didn't start out as a game." Hutch began, leaning forward in the less than comfortable visitor's chair. He pulled the grid covered topography map, and the marked up tourist map together and pointed to the spots on both maps that represented the prison. "Four years ago there was a real prison break. The prisoner managed to slip out of the garage in the middle of an emergency situation. The weather was bad, and the fighting inside the prison was critical enough that he went unnoticed for about thirty minutes. Enough time to disappear into the woods."

"Four years ago?" Samara asked. "The snow was bad that year, we had two avalanches on the upper slopes of Tehachapi Peak and Double Mountain."

"One of those avalanches killed that prisoner. The warden was gone, on vacation or something, Walters doesn't really know. But Ackabee was in charge, and hurting for men, so he sent BeeKay out with a handful of the most trusted prisoners, to hunt down the missing man. Not only did they find the body and return it, but the event vastly improved the behavior of those prisoners that had gone out. Ackabee began to use it as a kind of behavioral modification tool. Send the prisoners out to clear out dead falls or snow, help with a search. Maybe Ackabee couldn't get prison board approval, or maybe he didn't even bother trying, but to keep the whole thing hidden, he put the prisoners in guard's uniforms whenever they were outside the gate."

"Then one of the 'guards' escaped." Samara guessed.

"Right...Ackabee had to come down hard. Make an example. He liked the arrangement enough that he had to make it work flawlessly. So he sent out more prisoners with a guard, Walters this time, with orders to kill the escaped convict, and make it look like an accident. The prisoners he sent out were lifers. They found the escapee holed up in one of the old cabins on the mountain and torched it. Eventually Ackabee purchased the land the cabin sat on, and the fire, according to Walters, was never questioned.

"A year later Ackabee had a man go up for parole that he felt deserved to get out. The parole board didn't agree. Ackabee didn't like the decision so he took matters into his own hands. He rotated the prisoner into the guard shifts, changed the records and started calling him by a different name. Ackabee told the warden that he had hired a new man. He had the inmates build a new cabin on the land he'd previously purchased, and the prisoner was allowed to leave the prison at night after his 'shift' ended."

"That kinda preferential treatment isn't gonna fly on the inside." Dobey said.

"According to Walters, it didn't. Ackabee nearly had a riot on his hands before he let it get through the grapevine that there was a new option for lifers, and anyone with fifteen or more years on their sentence. He called it his "freedom acclimation" program. The prisoners could earn the chance to be 'hired' as a guard, earn new IDs, and a bus ticket out of the state, if they did Ackabee's...bidding."

"Bidding?" Samara asked.

"There's a laundry list of illegal activity that served to either line Ackabee's pockets, or improve the state of the prison. Walters said things inside were looking up, for the prisoners and the guards. Then Ackabee's favorite prisoner was killed by another inmate. The inmate disappeared and the rules for the "release program" changed."

"Changed how?"

"Walters said that Ackabee always kept a tattered novel in his locker. A reprinted copy of a book called, 'The Most Dangerous Game'. I remember that book from school, Captain, it's about a Russian aristocrat who leads a safari-like hunt on a private island. Only the prey..is human."

"And this is what Walters claims was going on inside the prison?" Dobey demanded

"Captain, if we find a body in any of these places, its going to validate Walters' story. All it takes is one. And Walters doesn't strike me as smart enough to have made all this up."

"Why did Walters attack Starsky?"

"Ackabee ordered it. His one phone call was part of a set up he'd arranged before coming to the station. Walters was to wait by the phone while Ackabee talked to you and Samara. If he got a phone call the orders were to find Starsky, Ackabee's one loose end, and kill him."

"One prisoner gets killed, and Ackabee turns a mountainside into a war zone?" Samara asked, as unconvinced as Dobey.

"Starsky said Ackabee was pretty clear about what little he had left to him. He also said that Ackabee operated by his own set of rules. Prison changes people, even the people that get to leave every night…" Hutch caught Dobey nodding agreement out of the corner of his eye and focused on Samara. "I think the prison had become Ackabee's domain. His castle. His ex-wife took everything else he could lay claim to."

"Sounds like you're already leading this investigation, Sergeant Hutchinson, what now?" Dobey said, pleased.

"We want to talk to Ackabee." Starsky said from where he was leaning against the doorjamb, prompting all three of the men in the hospital waiting room to get to their feet.

"You should be in bed." Dobey barked.

"I know that, Captain. And I will be, I promise. But not until we've had that conversation." Starsky insisted, meeting his partner's gaze and holding it.

"Captain, Luyu Samara has agreed to help me look after him, but we need to talk to Ackabee. Before he knows what Walters has told us." Hutch said.

Dobey eyed his men, then looked to the sheriff who crossed his arms over his chest, then shrugged.

"Ok. You have three hours. Then I want both of you in bed, and this time I want you to stay there."


	19. Chapter 19

For the first half-hour of their allotted three, Starsky and Hutch sat in a small meeting room in the back of the library staring at Ackabee. The old man hadn't changed much from the first day Starsky met him. He was a little more pale, had a bit of beard growth on his chin, but he was combed, groomed and still. While the old man sat like a stone watching them, Starsky and Hutch took turns laying photos down in front of him. Photos of inmates that, according to Ackabee's doctored files, had been sick or involved in fatal accidents in the prison.

As each photo went down on the table, Ackabee flickered his gaze down to the face for a split second, then back up again, looking to the cop that had put it there, then staring at the wall behind them. None of the three men in the room said a word, the only sound the slide of the photos across the table and the whir of a spool of tape through a recording machine. They only thing it had recorded so far was the sound of the two detectives introducing themselves, and asking Ackabee if he'd known his rights.

Ackabee's response had been benign. Yes, he knew his rights. He'd been in the prison system for almost three decades.

"I got a question for ya, Ackabee." Starsky said, after a few more photos slid across the table. "Did you know that your prisoners had rights?"

Ackabee's gaze shifted to Starsky, then down to another photo coming from Hutch.

"The constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment." Hutch said, and Ackabee glanced down at a photo from Starsky then up to Hutch.

"We're not saying, you're guilty of that, of course." Starsky said, watching another photo slide. The last photo. It almost slid off the table until the bottom edge came to rest against Ackabee's chest. The old man looked down at it and stared for a long moment, until he took the photo in one hand.

"How about you tell us about that one, Ackabee. What happened to that prisoner?" Hutch prompted.

Ackabee set the photo down on the pile.

"I'd like to speak to a lawyer." Ackabee said, then cleared his throat.

"Unfortunately, you've used up your one phone call." Starsky said. "And since you didn't call your lawyer, we're going to have to provide one for you."

Hutch quietly stood from his chair and moved to the door of the small room, opening it and letting Luyu enter the room. She'd changed into a professional pant suit, her hair back and in a bun. She stepped into the room with a briefcase, went straight to Ackabee and shook his hand, then seated herself beside him on his side of the table.

"Who's she?"

"My name is Luyu, Mr. Ackabee. These men asked me to sit in with you while you're being questioned."

"I want my attorney." Ackabee said.

"That's just fine, Ackabee." Hutch said. "We'll happily contact him or her for you once we're physically able to do so."

Ackabee made a face, then looked with disdain toward Luyu. "You know anything about this case?"

"Some." Luyu said, opening her briefcase. "My advice would be to cooperate for now, until you can get your own attorney here."

Ackabee didn't like it much, but he grunted accepting that he didn't have a choice. He looked to the picture again and Starsky watched his mouth tighten. "This prisoner died. He was killed."

"Killed how?" Hutch asked.

"Another prisoner knifed him."

"With what?"

"A shiv."

"Yeah, where'd the shiv come from?" Starsky asked.

"I don't know."

"You mean you don't care." Hutch said.

Ackabee lurched forward violently and without warning, rocking the table and upsetting the photographs. Luyu jumped, but recovered quickly.

"What's the prisoner's name?" Starsky asked.

"His name was Tommy."

"Tommy what?" Hutch asked.

"Tommy Kiewel."

"Was that always his name?" Starsky asked, casually.

Ackabee's mouth slipped closed. His eyes began to bulge from his face and he looked between the two men, fish-eyed. His gaze slid toward Luyu, then he picked up the photo, his fingertips brushing against the surface. "No. His birth name was Tommy Ackabee."

"Any-" Hutch began, then took a breath and quietly said. "He was your son."

Ackabee nodded.

"What was Tommy's crime, Ackabee?" Starsky asked.

From behind the photo they heard a wet sob, and the wheezing cough of a man breaking apart. "It wasn't his fault." Ackabee whispered, his face flushing with blood. The old man gasped, dragging a hard breath into his lungs and releasing an agonized cry that resonated in the chests of each of the other bodies in the room.

Hours later, as Captain Dobey listened to the tape, the heartbreak of a father mourning his son was unmistakable.

"He took the rap. He took the rap for those pigs! It wasn't his fault!" Ackabee had screamed into the tape, the rest of his words indistinguishable.

"Who is Tommy Ackabee?" Dobey asked, looking to the two exhausted detectives. He watched Hutchinson shut off the tape, his hands covering his eyes.

"Tommy Ackabee was a rookie cop. He hung around with a bad bunch that he'd met at the police academy and was present on April 17th, 1968 when a group of police officers attacked and molested a group of high school girls in San Francisco. In his testimony, Tommy Ackabee claimed to be the alibi for the rest of the men, claimed none of them were there, which is what his guilty 'friends' told him to do. Except that once he started covering for them, they all turned on him and claimed he had been the one to instigate the attack. The victims identified all four police officers, claiming all four had had a part in the crime. The girls were...it was bad, Captain. So bad that in the appeal, two out of the three testimonies were considered invalid because of the…" Hutch stopped, looking to his partner before he said, "...poor mental state of the victims. The parents rallied, they worked the community into a lather and their combined efforts convinced the judge to stick to the original findings. A victory...really, for abused victims."

"The problem was…" Starsky said, "That meant that Tommy got as hard a sentence as the rest. Ackabee nearly went broke trying to get another appeal, his wife left him. The only thing Ackabee managed was to get his son transferred to the prison he worked in, under his ex-wife's maiden name. For years after he did everything he could to protect him."

"And then Tommy went up for parole…" Dobey said.

"Right...but the parents of the molested girls were there. They leaned on the parole board the same way they did the judge, and the board ruled against releasing Tommy." Starsky said.

"Ackabee unwittingly made things worse for his son on the inside by arranging his own release program for the kid. A prisoner with a 12-year ride, just under the limit of Ackabee's prison release rules, couldn't stand it, snuck into the guard's lounge and knifed Tommy Kiewel Ackabee. He bled out before his father could even get to him." Hutch said.

"Ackabee snapped." Starsky added, sighing. "He changed the rules of the 'game', released the prisoner that had killed his son onto the mountain, then hunted him down."

Dobey sat and stared quietly at the stilled spools of tape. "All that is on here?" Dobey asked.

His officers nodded.

"That was a big risk, bringing Luyu in there." Dobey said.

"We made sure she never actually identified herself as an attorney." Starsky said. "And as the county coroner she had the clearance to be in the room."

Dobey was quiet again, the weight of the heartbreak that loopholes in the system had caused, tainting the victory of a solved case. A solid chain of evidence. A cut and dried testimony. Dobey sat forward and shook his head, leaning his elbows on the table.

"What a mess." He said.

"Yeah." Hutch said, glancing toward his partner. Starsky was sitting on the edge of his seat, elbows on his thighs, practically asleep.

"Alright...you men are on medical leave until further notice. Grab your resident coroner and get on outta here."

"Come on, partner." Hutch said.

"Hmm? Oh." Starsky blinked then leaned on Hutch's arm, getting to his feet.

Dobey watched his men leave the station, collecting the lovely Luyu as they did, one on each side, making cute comments until Luyu started to laugh softly.

He glanced down at the photo of a young man, pale and scared, a future as a cop ruined by a single mistake - being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Trusting the wrong people. Living the wrong life.

The good cops that had cracked the case started at the same place as Tommy. Dobey checked the records and realized, Tommy was their age. He might have been a colleague of theirs but for circumstances.

The thought gave him an idea.


	20. Chapter 20

4 months later.

Captain Harold C. Dobey, County Sheriff Ahiga Samara, County Coroner Luyu Samara, Detective Sergeant Ken Hutchinson, Detective Sergeant Dave Starsky and a prisoner by the name of Willard Thompson Ackabee stood on a mountainside in the dry heat of July. The mountain was called Tehachapi Peak. The group stood sheltered by maple and fir trees, the the cops from the city in black suits, Samara in his uniform, Luyu in a black skirt and top. A gravestone had been placed on a site that had once held a cabin.

Per a judicial order the cabin had been bulldozed, the property given to police auction. The land was purchased by a private party. The proceeds went to a family in San Francisco. The family of a rape victim. Luyu had delivered it personally, explaining where it came from. Explaining who had purchased the cabin. Explaining why the past had risen again to greet them.

The gravestone had been purchased by Captain Dobey. The inscription read, "Officer Tommy K. Ackabee. Beloved Son."

The prisoner, while bound by handcuffs, was permitted to approach the gravestone and place a single rose on its crest. Captain Dobey crossed himself and whispered a quiet prayer.

The mountain around them, alive with the business of summer, answered the solemnity of the group with the exuberance of life in motion and after a moment, Ackabee turned from the grave site and nodded to the two officers. Starsky and Hutch walked the man to a waiting prison transport, helped him into the back, then shut the doors. Hutch signaled to the driver and the transport pulled out of the drive, and started down the mountain.

The two men watched the transport pull away, then were joined by Luyu who slid between them, her left hand slipping into Hutch's, her right grabbing Starsky's. Both men looked to her, each aware of the significance of the shared moment. Each grateful that she had chosen to attend.

Behind them, Dobey and Samara had drifted into conversation, studying the site that would soon hold more gravestones, a marker and be bordered by a stone wall. Not as a monument, but a graveyard. The only graveyard that would be owned by the California Institute of Corrections in Kern County.

"So, tell me something…" Starsky said, slipping his arm down around Luyu's waist in the same moment that Hutch put his arm around Luyu's shoulders. "What does Tehachapi mean anyway?"

"Hard climb." Luyu said.

"Really?" Hutch asked, surprised.

"Hard climb?" Starsky asked, enunciating the words.

"Yeah." Luyu said, smiling. "Hard climb."

"That's it? I was expecting 'great mountain' or 'place where ground touches sky'."

"Home of the gods?" Hutch teased.

"Sure...anything but 'hard climb'."

"It's fitting." Luyu said grinning. "Both of you spent over a month on this mountain, searching. You know how hard it is. Why should my people have called it something other than what it is?"

"She's got a point, Starsk."

"Yeah...you didn't hear what Hutch called the place."

"Starsk…"

Luyu's eyes sparkled and she looked to the blonde cop. "What did you call our mountain, Sergeant Hutchinson?"

Hutch smiled and shook his head. "I...it...it doesn't matter. It was-"

Starsky grinned and leaned in close to Luyu's ear. A second later she gasped, her face reflecting genuine shock. She covered her mouth with her hand and choked on a laugh.

Hutch fought a smile, his face flushing red, and walked staring at the ground.

"Wow…" Luyu said finally, then was guided into the Torino from the driver's side. Starsky followed her into the car, giving his partner a disapproving shake of the head and starting the engine. They waited until Hutch had circled the car, and slid into the passenger side.

Luyu stared at Hutch then struggled not to laugh as she said, "Witch's Mound?"

"Well…" Hutch tried to defend himself, then met the shaking head of his partner and cleared his throat. "So, what should we do for lunch?

The End


End file.
